>
> But why assume a body is a machine in the first
> place?
>
Why not? It takes in energy, it eliminates waste, it breaks, it needs repair. It operates according to the same physical laws that every other machine does: I can't fly just because some mystical man behind the curtain in my brain decides to. Does a michine that reaches a certain level of complexity somehow cease being a machine?
Your posts on this thread have fascinated me, because I've agreed with virtually every fact and disagreed with virtually every interpretation. It's almost like arguing with a fundamentalist about evolution: it doesn't matter what facts are raised, since their faith precedes and interprets every fact they perceive. Your unshakeable, bedrock belief seem to be that the extraordinary (consciousness) cannot arise from the ordinary (matter): there can therefore by definition be no continuum between the human brain and a lightswitch, or a human body and a bacterium.
What you seem to be saying, in reference to human memory, embronic development, and the like is that anything we don't currently understand is by definition not understandable. A curious postition, indeed, based on the rather limited time human beings have even been engaged in any kind of systematic scientific process.
Come to think of it, maybe your position and that of the fundementalists are not too dissimilar. Darwinism is fundamentally about the idea that simple algorithmic processes can give rise to the extraordinary - that, on a basic level, you throw some chemicals in a bottle, shake well and get Shakespeare.
It's the most revolutionary, dangerous, and extraordinary idea in human history, and we've only had about 150 years to digest it. But give it time - the wonderful thing about scientific debates, as opposed to religious ones, is that eventually they get decided one way or another. We will either develop AI or know why we can't; we will either figure out the mechanisms of embronic development or know exactly where the "mystery", if any, lies. All else is speculation.
Jim Baird
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