84,181
edits
Template:Causal intervention and symbolic language: Difference between revisions
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Template:Causal intervention and symbolic language (view source)
Revision as of 10:03, 15 November 2022
, 15 November 2022no edit summary
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
Living things — biological organisms, but also [[cellular automaton|cellular automata]] etc | Living things — biological organisms, but also [[cellular automaton|cellular automata]] etc. — necessarily have encoded into them a set of “instructions” for their own replication: this is an operating condition of replicating: the organism functions like a [[Turing machine]]. | ||
The physical [[substrate]] in which the information is encoded is not materially important to the replication process, only ''symbolically'' so. The instructions themselves are “[[Substrate|substrate neutral]]”: could be encoded in DNA, cells, ticker tape or code. You could build a Turing machine out of vacuum tubes, or ten ton blocks, and it would take a lot more energy to process a simple string than would a Pentium processor. | |||
Now, [[philosophy]] nuts: recall from your ''God, Mind and Free Will'' intro lectures the materialist “clincher” that proved consciousness must be wholly material: ''there is no evidence for non-material causal interventions in the physical world''. If there were, there would be some kind of injection or leakage of energy into the physical system. But there is not: energy is conserved. A non-material consciousness to would invalidate the laws of thermodynamics: non-material consciousness breaks rules of thermodynamics, in other words. Game over. | Now, [[philosophy]] nuts: recall from your ''God, Mind and Free Will'' intro lectures the materialist “clincher” that proved consciousness must be wholly material: ''there is no evidence for non-material causal interventions in the physical world''. If there were, there would be some kind of injection or leakage of energy into the physical system. But there is not: energy is conserved. A non-material consciousness to would invalidate the laws of thermodynamics: non-material consciousness breaks rules of thermodynamics, in other words. Game over. | ||