--- Ted Winslow <egwinslow at rogers.com> wrote:
>
>
> Miles Jackson wrote:
>
> >> Miles Jackson asks:
> >>
> >>> Consider: what if we learn more and more about
> human
> >>> cognition and we discover it's nothing like
> >>> machine output?
> >>
> >> Then we'll design machines that utilize what we
> know of
> >> human cognition to perform cognitive functions
> better.
> >>
> >> Why is there such a tendency to deny that
> cognitive
> >> functions are beyond the eventual reach of a
> technology that
> >> is now scarcely even newborn?
> >>
> >> Shane Mage
> >
> > Good point. We'll have to see what happens.
> Given the fact
> > that psychologists--after 100 years of theory and
> research!--
> > have not even come to a consensus on what
> intelligence is in
> > human beings, I guess I'm not expecting rapid
> advancements.
>
> This can't be done. Defining "thinking" and
> "cognition" as machine
> replicable routines leaves out essential features of
> human thinking and
> cognition that aren't replicable by a machine.
>
> Whitehead, in pointing out that deduction can't be
> the main method of
> "philosophy" (which for him means ontology), makes
> the main method
> "direct intuitive observation." This is what
> Husserl means by
> "phenomenology," This is the ultimate basis of
> thinking and cognition.
>
> It requires and is the activity of what Husserl
> calls a "transcendental
> subject" i.e. a consciously self-determined being
> whose consciousness
> provides direct experience of an external world and
> whose subjectivity
> (whose "ego") is able through this consciousness to
> cognize reality by
> means of direct intuitive observation.
>
> The being of such a subject is not coherently
> thinkable as a "machine."
> The conception of the latter derives from the
> scientific materialist
> ontology that became dominant in the 17th century.
> It assumes reality
> to be a set of externally related material entities
> (i.e. a set of
> material "substances" in the sense of Aristotle and
> Descartes) in
> which self-determination and final causation play no
> part.
>
> This has no logical space for a transcendental
> subject and, hence, no
> logical space for thinking and cognition (in so far
> as we retain as
> part of their definition the meaning that they are
> the conscious
> activities of a subject). In fact, it has no
> logical space for
> consciousness of any kind. Even if consciousness
> were possible, the
> conception of consciousness to which the rest of the
> ontology leads
> creates an impossible problem for epistemology since
> the object of this
> consciousness is not, given the ontology, direct
> experience of an
> external world. This problem was elaborated in
> Hume's skepticism. Its
> full logical implication (not completely worked out
> by Hume) is
> "solipsism of the present moment."
>
> The "argument" that consciousness, thinking and
> cognition can all be
> characteristics of a "machine" assumes that being is
> a machine. All
> characteristics of being must therefore be
> characteristics of a
> machine. Consciousness, thinking and cognition are
> characteristics of
> at least one kind of being, human being. They must
> therefore be
> characteristics of a machine and there is no
> ontological barrier to
> their becoming characteristics of another machine.
> To eliminate any
> such barrier, the terms are redefined so as to get
> rid of those
> meanings which are inconsistent with the idea of a
> machine i.e. with
> the premises of scientific materialism.
>
> Whitehead demonstrates that this still leaves
> problems of logical
> incoherence. His main effort, however, is to work
> out an alternative
> ontology, an ontology of internal relations so
> conceived as to be
> consistent with self-determination and final
> causation and with
> transcendental subjectivity. This ontology sublates
> the positive
> content of "science" developed on the ontological
> foundation of
> scientific materialism. It can, he claims, be
> grounded in direct
> intuitive observation once we rid ourselves of the
> mistaken
> interpretation of conscious experience in terms of
> scientific
> materialism that, since the 17th century, has been
> mistakenly
> identified with conscious experience per se.
>
> The essential features of this ontology are also
> what Marx means by
> "historical materialism."
>
> Ted
>
>
>
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