Lost touch with a Michael Anderson in Cambridge a couple of years ago, and keep getting cross hits from this different one. He’s involved with the Active Logic, Metacognitive Computation and Mind Research Group whose aim is “to design and implement common sense in a computer”.
Anyway the reason I captured the link, apart from an interest in the subject, is that I notice one of his forthcoming papers is co-authored with a certain Gregg Rosenberg – is that the same one to which I already have a link ? Yup it is, AI Centre at Georgia Univ, and author of “A Place For Consciousness“, which confusingly, but correctly I originally found referenced by someone whose surname was Gregg.
I read the overview of ” a place for consciousness” and at the author’s suggestion, read the intro and a bit of the first chapter. the problem I have personally is that I am not familiar with a lot of the terminology, which keeps me going to the dictionary, which doesn’t explain fully the meaning. I’m talking about words such as intrinsic and causal. I know that these words have special meanings when used in philosophy.
And then there is the opening thought in his book about “the ghost in the machine” and he says it as though, of course, it is true.”we just feel it, don’t we?”
Pinker, in particular, shows that it is not.
I get very confused by all of this.I am not educated in philosophy, although I have read some. I find its twists and turns sometimes more than I can bear. And at the end of it all, I find myself saying “so what?”
What does any of this mean for me in practical terms?
Will it help me to get along with my husband better? Will it enable me to be a better mother? Will any of my friends be interested in my theories (really someone else’s) about the meaning of existence?
Is it worth my time to try to follow the logic?
Unsubtle, that’s me.
ok, I went back and read the entire first chapter. Aside from the jargon I think I was following his train. I liked the metaphor of the sliding tile puzzle, that to solve the puzzle one must be willing to rearrange some of the tiles which appear to be already properly placed. he doesn’t seem to be defending dualism but states that the physicalist(?) view doesn’t suffice either, (would dawkins disagree?)
To be honest Alice, you’re ahead of me here, it’s a long time since I originally read it. The blog here was just to capture the link between the two threads.
At this stage I suspend judgement on whether that’s meaningless coincidence or something significant.
I don’t believe Dawkins expresses much philosophical thought. By his objective rational approach he is almost by definition dualist. If Rosenberg says dualism and/or physicalism are lacking then I’d be agreeing, and it’s probably why I was originally sympathetic to the article.
(Incidentally, I was told by someone on the MoQ discussion board only today, that my working definition of “physicalism” was so broad as to be meaningless. Ho hum.)