From: QueeneMUSE@aol.com
Date sent: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 14:45:48 EST
Subject: Re: Uploading and Consciousness (was: electronic intelligence and
ethics)
To: extropians@extropy.com
Send reply to: extropians@extropy.com
> In a message dated 2/24/2000 11:24:39 AM Pacific Standard Time,
> vxs@mailandnews.com writes:
>
> << Consciousness is not some magic thing
> which floats around waiting to be embodied in one brain or another. It is a
> result, in your current organic brain, of a set of neurons performing some
> operation. >>
>
> That's like saying the meal is a result of the stove heating up the pot!
>
> You're forgetting a whole series of chemical reactions - sometimes called
> "the soup'.
>
That's the material substrate, not the dynamically complex and
interrelated recursive patterning which emerges from it. "Minding"
is what the brain DOES. This position is known as emergent
materialism - consciousness emerges from the brain (upon which it
is dependent for its manifestation) as a synergistic product of its
actions and relations, rather than being identical with it (see Daniel
Dennett).
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