From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sun Dec 10 2000 - 07:01:51 MST
At 07:37 PM 10/12/00 +0930, Emlyn wrote:
>Damien, and probably someone else in the world*, takes a third position; that
>intelligence/consciousness is actually the substrate, the computer, the
>physical brain. More acurately, I think he proposes that it is the
>combination of program and machine, the brain given a particular
>configuration.
>
>Am I correct in these attributions?
Obviously not the first part of the above--a dead brain, say, is not a
mind--unless you assume a brain that's operating and embodies a history of
interaction with the world and its own components, so the second gets
closer. I still think the neatest apothegm is `The mind is how the brain
minds the body'. (Does that imply a teeny little ant mind in a teeny little
ant body? A larger dispersed ant mind in the non-contiguous ant nest? Oy,
mind those implications, if you don't mind.)
[*`someone else in the world' might include William Calvin or Gerald
Edelman or perhaps Walter J. Freeman, although I haven't finishing reading
him yet]
Damien Broderick
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