Well, the time has come for me to fly to the other side of the planet: that I was born in a time when I can do such a thing never fails to give me an experience of wondrous awe every bit as intense as that which I used to derive from God or the metaphysical!
I am simultaneously delighted and maddeningly frustrated at how this thread has progressed (the very definition of a Great Debate, perhaps :).) Whole swathes of misuderstanding, muddle and straw regarding the contention that our thoughts and awareness might arise form physical processes have been swept away. At the very least, I think there has been a realisation that the pursuit of an explanation for cognition is a protoscience rather than a pseudoscience, which I would have gladly settled for when I posted my OP.
On the downside, the sheer inability to make the baby step from eg. a tree as a physical object to a tree falling as a physical process, or from a physical process to a computational process (biological or electronic), was one which I did not expect to spend so much time making and, with some, failing to make. (And the speed with which the toddler would then crawl off way down the road, resulting in so much cajoling and coaxing to persuade it to come back and try again, was often astonishing!) Nevertheless, such difficulties at least identify those trip hazards for future, and I can ask myself how they might be smoothed over for the next attempt. I was also disappointed how often the twin SOME/ALL pugilstick came out to bludgeon ambiguities at the drop of a hat. A successfully completed baby step does not instantly make the baby able to yomp across the whole bridge, and I rather resented having to continually make it clear that I understood this. Again, useful lessons for future anyhow.
Having tried to clarify what I am saying about cognition, awareness, consciousness and the rest of it, and what I am not, for some 8 pages now, I think a brief summary might be in order.
I do say that:
[ul][li]Senses and memory access are the key to understanding basic cognition and awareness. If an entity has no continually incoming senses (like, say, a database), or no memory of past states (like, say, a pressure gauge, amoeba, rock or hurricane), or no way to access those memories (like, say, a cliff face or dead human, or if the memories are somehow degraded or encrypted such that they cannot be distinguished from randomness), then basic cognition and awareness are foiled. [/li][li]There is something which a bee does or has, which a live human also does or has, but which a dead human does or has not. Choose your word for that: I prefer “cognition”, but awareness, sentience, consciousness or subjective experience are all alternatives, perhaps with different qualifiers.[/li][li]Bee cognition can be explained. It is understood. On what basis, in what terms, is that explanation and understanding achieved? Senses and memory. On what basis, in what terms, is the explanation and understanding of the bees senses and memory achieved? Biological cells and their interaction with other cells, molecules or photons of energy. On what basis, in what terms, is the explanation and understanding of interacting cells, molecules and energy achieved? I struggle to find a more fitting word than physics: atoms and photons are physical things, and their interactions are physical processes.[/ul][/li]
I do not say that:
[ul][li]Senses and memory explain everything about cognition: why we cry at sad songs or understand maths, or why our awareness of memories feels like it’s so much more than simply reactivating them. If human awareness is ever to be explained and understood, it must be as some vastly complex combination of multiple senses, multiple levels of memory, associations of those memories with sounds or symbols, and the utterly baffling chemical moderation we call “emotion”. Those separate parts are not yet explained or understood, and so the sum of those parts most certainly isn’t. All I do say is that I believe that there is no more than the sum of those parts, no gestalt, despite those deficiencies in the understanding of those parts or the combination thereof. [/li][li]Metaphysical entities are currently explainable or understandable as physical entities. Does this make me a Metaphysicalist-of-the-Gaps? So be it. But other branches of science don’t explain everything either, and yet I do not ascribe to a God-of-the-Gaps position. I call myself a physicalist because I believe that they ultimately will be, and that the bridge between the physical and the metaphysical at least has solid foundations despite those gaps. Is this “faith”? A belief in something you cannot prove? I suppose so, but then again so, arguably, is everything.[/ul][/li]
I will leave you with a strawman. Bear with me: it is a strawman who once had a brain, and commanded intellectual respect from simple Dorothy to expert sorcerors alike.
The strawman looked around the yellow brick road, and saw all of this wonderful, incredible life. He also saw this humdrum, everyday matter. What was it, he asked, that living things had which inanimate matter didn’t? Surely it must be some mysterious spirit, or essence, some quale, a je ne sais quoi, a gestalt which matter is somehow imbued with. Nothing in matter, its behaviours, or properties implies “life” or a mechanism for its occurrence: the cells just sit there. From where does all this vigour and diversity come from?
An old man called Charles appeared, looking a little like a bald albino gorilla with an enormous beard. “The cells are the life, strawman”, he said. “What you consider a completely different thing entirely is still explained and understood by the cells, and the physical processes undergone by many billions of them together: their replication, mutation and selection.”
Strawman protested: “What do you mean, physical processes? What is physical about ‘replication’?”
The old man took strawman’s hand. “Take this small step along the road with me. Consider a tiny spiral molecule, called Dan. Dan is a physical thing, is he not?”
“Hmm, OK, yes, for the sake of argument” replied straw.
“Now, if Dan splits in half and each half grabs onto similar passing atoms, Dan copies himself”, and he showed straw some convincing evidence that this happened. “This process of replication is physical, and so is the replica, yes?”
“Errm, well, ye…”, began the strawman, and fell over. The old man helped him up.
“I’ll leave you to think about it, my straw friend. This doesn’t explain everything you see around you, and my friends and I still have right old arguments about some of the details. But if you accept that the replication process is physical, you might accept that life is ultimately explained and understood by physical processes.” And he toddled off down the yellow brick road…
…all the way to Oz.
Au revoir, friends, see you in April!
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