He assumes that Increased Processing Power (Quantitative Change) will somehow, automatically translate into a Qualitative Change (Logic will become Consciousness).
but it seems he doesn't understand that an increase in processor speed doesn't automatically get you a MIND.
What happens when the clock-speed slows down? Consciousness is what persists BETWEEN clock cycles.
> Einsteins "religiosity" was far more about aesthetic > sensibility than about doctrine. He is talking > about a feeling of wonder, not about belief.
agreed - its not about 'belief in doctrine'. einstein's views on religion (as can be seen by reading his essay) was much profounder than mere dogma.
because of all the BS of dogma, people often throw out any sense of 'religious wonder' out the window along with it - einstein nicely deliniates between that sort of religiosity and what he calls 'cosmic religious feeling'.
'...to suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances
for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting
different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical
and chromatic aberration could have been formed by natural
selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.'
"In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this [cosmic religious] feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it. (Albert Einstein)
i've always felt it is better to go back to the ORIGINAL documents than to read commentary ABOUT them. in addition to Darwin, there was also Haeckel, Kant, and Steiner -- who were certainly some of darwin's most significant fellow researchers in the area. here's a experpted chapter from one of Darwins contemporaries circa 1886:
Above all, one has committed a serious error in this. One believed that the method of inorganic science should simply be taken over into the realm of organisms. One considered the method employed here to be altogether the only scientific one, and thought that for "organics" to be scientifically possible, it would have to be so in exactly the same sense in which physics is, for example. The possibility was forgotten, however, that perhaps the concept of what is scientific is much broader than "the explanation of the world according to the laws of the physical world." Even today one has not yet penetrated through to this knowledge. Instead of investigating what it is that makes the approach of the inorganic sciences scientific, and of then seeing a method that can be applied to the world of living things while adhering to the requirements that result from this investigation, one simply declared that the laws gained upon this lower stage of existence are universal.
Above all, however, one should investigate what the basis is for any scientific thinking. We have done this in our study. In the preceding chapter we have also recognized that inorganic lawfulness is not the only one in existence but is only a special case of all possible lawfulness in general. The method of physics is simply one particular case of a general scientific way of investigation in which the nature of the pertinent objects and the region this science serves are taken into consideration. If this method is extended into the organic, one obliterates the specific nature of the organic. Instead of investigating the organic in accordance with its nature, one forces upon it a lawfulness alien to it. In this way, however, by denying the organic, one will never come to know it. Such scientific conduct simply repeats, upon a higher level, what it has gained upon a lower one; and although it believes that it is bringing the higher form of existence under laws established elsewhere, this form slips away from it in its efforts, -because such scientific conduct does not know how to grasp and deal with this form in its particular nature.
All this comes from the erroneous view that the method of a science is extraneous to its objects of study, that it is not determined by these objects but rather by our own nature. It is believed that one must think in a particular way about objects, that one must indeed think about all objects -- throughout the entire universe -- in the same way. Investigations are undertaken that are supposed to show that, due to the nature of our spirit, we can think only inductively or deductively, etc.
In doing so, however, one overlooks the fact that the objects perhaps will not tolerate the way of looking at them that we want to apply to them.
A look at the views of Haeckel, who is certainly the most significant of the natural-scientific theoreticians of the present day, shows us that the objection we are making to the organic natural science of our day is entirely justified: namely, that it does not carry over into organic nature the principle of scientific contemplation in the absolute sense, but only the principle of inorganic nature.
When he demands of all scientific striving that "the causal interconnections of phenomena become recognized everywhere," when he says that "if psychic mechanics were not so infinitely complex, if we were also able to have a complete overview of the historical development of psychic functions, we would then be able to bring them all into a mathematical soul formula," then one can see clearly from this what he wants: to treat the whole world according to the stereotype of the method of the physical sciences.
This demand, however, does not underlie Darwinism in its original form but only in its present-day interpretation. We have seen that to explain a process in inorganic nature means to show its lawful emergence out of other sense-perceptible realities, to trace it back to objects that, like itself, belong to the sense world. But how does modern organic science employ the principles of adaptation and the struggle for existence (both of which we certainly do not doubt are the expression of facts)? It is believed that one can trace the character of a particular species directly back to the outer conditions in which it lived, in somewhat the same way as the heating of an object is traced back to the rays of the sun falling upon it. One forgets completely that one can never show a species' character, with all its qualities that are full of content, to be the result of these conditions. The conditions may have a determining influence, but they are not a creating cause. We can definitely say that under the influence of certain circumstances a species had to evolve in such a way that one or another organ became particularly developed; what is there as content, however, the specifically organic, cannot be derived from outer conditions. Let us say that an organic entity has the essential characteristics a b c; then, under the influence of certain outer conditions, it has evolved. Through this, its characteristics have taken on the particular form a'b'c'. When we take these influences into account we will then understand that a has evolved into the form of a', b into b', c into c'. But the specific nature of a, b, and c can never arise as the outcome of external conditions.
One must, above all, focus one's thinking on the question: From what do we then derive the content of that general "something" of which we consider the individual organic entity to be a specialized case? We know very well that the specialization comes from external influences. But we must trace the specialized shape itself back to an inner principle. We gain enlightenment as to why just this particular form has evolved when we study a being's environment. But this particular form is, after all, something in and of itself; we see that it possesses certain characteristics. We see what is essential. A content, configurated in itself, confronts the outer phenomenal world, and this content provides us with what we need in tracing those characteristics back to their source. In inorganic nature we perceive a fact and see, in order to explain it, a second, a third fact and so on; and the result is that the first fact appears to us to be the necessary consequence of the other ones. In the organic world this is not so. There, in addition to the facts, we need yet another factor. We must see what works in from outer circumstances as confronted by something that does not passively allow itself to be determined by them but rather determines itself, actively, out of itself, under the influence of the outer circumstances.
But what is that basic factor? It can, after all, be nothing other than what manifests in the particular in the form of the general. In the particular, however, a definite organism always manifests. That basic factor is therefore an organism in the form of the general: a general image of the organism, which comprises within itself all the particular forms of organisms.
Following Goethe's example, let us call this general organism typus. Whatever the word typus might mean etymologically, we are using it in this Goethean sense and never mean anything else by it than what we have indicated. This typus is not developed in all its completeness in any single organism. Only our thinking, in accordance with reason, is able to take possession of it, by drawing it forth, as a general image, from phenomena. The typus is therewith the idea of the organism: the animalness in the animal, the general plant in the specific one.
One should not picture this typus as anything rigid. It has nothing at all to do with what Agassiz, Darwin's most significant opponent, called "an incarnate creative thought of God's." The typus is something altogether fluid, from which all the particular species and genera, which one can regard as subtypes or specialized types, can be derived. The typus does not preclude the theory of evolution. It does not contradict the fact that organic forms evolve out of one another. It is only reason's protest against the view that organic development consists purely in sequential, factual (sense-perceptible) forms. It is what underlies this whole development. It is what establishes the interconnection in all this endless manifoldness. It is the inner aspect of what we experience as the outer forms of living things. The Darwinian theory presupposes the typus.
The typus is the true archetypal organism; according to how it specializes ideally, it is either archetypal plant or archetypal animal. It cannot be any one, sense-perceptibly real living being. What Haeckel or other naturalists regard as the archetypal form is already a particular shape; it is, in fact, the simplest shape of the typus. The fact that in time the typus arises in its simplest form first does not require the forms arising later to be the result of those preceding them in time. AR forms result as a consequence of the typus; the first as well as the last are manifestations of it. We must take it as the basis of a true organic science and not simply undertake to derive the individual animal and plant species out of one another. The typus runs like a red thread through all the developmental stages of the organic world. We must hold onto it and then with it travel through this great realm of many forms. Then this realm will become understandable to us. Otherwise it falls apart for us, just as the rest of the world of experience does, into an unconnected mass of particulars. In fact, even when we believe that we are leading what is later, more complicated, more compound, back to a previous simpler form and that in the latter we have something original, even then we are deceiving ourselves, for we have only derived a specific form from a specific form.
Friedrich Theodor Vischer once said of the Darwinian theory that it necessitates a revision of our concept of time. We have now arrived at a point that makes evident to us in what sense such a revision would have to occur. It would have to show that deriving something later out of something earlier is no explanation, that what is first in time is not first in principle. All deriving has to do with principles, and at best it could be shown which factors were at work such that one species of beings evolved before another one in time.
The typus plays the same role in the organic world as natural law does in the inorganic. Just as natural law provides us with the possibility of recognizing each individual occurrence as a part of one great whole, so the typus puts us in a position to regard the individual organism as a particular form of the archetypal form.
Error: Your comment has too few characters per line (so how am i suppossed to post a #$%#$% haiku!?!?)
= Error Haiku =
A Japanese academic, Kanta Matsuura, in the Economics Faculty reports: In Japan, they have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft error messages with their own Japanese haiku poetry, each only 17 syllables, 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second and 5 in the third.
Your file so big. It might be very useful. But now it is gone.
Error: Your comment has too few characters per line
--The Web site you seek; Cannot be located but; Countless more exist.
--Chaos reigns within; Reflect, repent, and reboot; Order shall return.
how to post haiku, and get it past the slashdot 'lameness filter'? too few characters per line? but that's the way it is? slashdot lameness filter killing three-line haiku - bah!
--ABORTED effort; Close all that you have worked on; You ask far too much.
--Windows NT crashed; I am the Blue Screen of Death; No one hears your screams.
Error: Your comment has too few ch3ar4acters per lineError: quickview comment has too few character42s per line...
--Yesterday it worked; Today it is not working; Windows is like that.
E2rror: Your comment has slashdot few24 characters per line - arrgh!
--First snow, then silence; This thousand dollar screen dies; So beautifully.
Error: Your comment9 has too few characters p5er line3 Error: Your4 comment ha8s too few2 characters per3 l2ine Error: Your comment9 ha3s too few characters per22 lin2e
--With searching comes loss;; And the presence of absence; "My Novel" not found.
Error: Your comment has too few characters per lineError: Your comment has too few characters per lineErr... aaarrrhhh!
--The Tao that is seen; Is not the true Tao-until; You bring fresh toner.
--Stay the patient course; Of little worth is your ire; The network is down.
--A crash reduces; Your expensive computer; To a simple stone.
-- Three things are certain; Death, taxes, and lost data; Guess which has occurred.
--You step in the stream; But the water has moved on; This page is not here.
Error: Your comment has too few characters per line -- @#%@$% slashdot...
--Out of memory; We wish to hold the whole sky; But we never will.
--The document you're seeking; Having been erased; Must now be retyped.
--Serious error; All shortcuts have disappeared; Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
Error: Your co1mment has3 too fred george per lin6eError: Your comment has too few characters per lineEr2ror: Your comment has tooh few characters per lineError: Your comment has too few characte5rs per lineError: Your comment has too few charact6ers per lineErr6r: Your comment has 5tooh few characters per line Error: Your comment has too few ugabuga the slashdot jungle p4er lineError: Your comment has too few characters per lineError: Your comment has too few charactcers per lineError: Your co7mment has too few c4haracters per lineError: Your comment has too few character8s per lineError: Your comment has too few c8haracters per lineError: Your comment has too few characters per lineError: Your comment has too few characters per line --
the brain is the substrate into which consciousness acts.
cryonics has a religious belief that our sense of Self in somehow built-up from the interaction of matter amongst itself.
however --
Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of thoughts about the phenomena of the world.
Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or material processes. But, in doing so, it is already confronted by two different sets of facts: the material world, and the thoughts about it.
The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes place in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place in the animal organs.
Just as he attributes mechanical and organic effects to matter, so he credits matter in certain circumstances with the capacity to think.
He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to matter instead of to himself.
And thus he is back again at his starting point. How does matter come to think about its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and content just to exist?
The materialist has turned his attention away from the definite subject, his own I, and has arrived at an image of something quite vague and indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again.
The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem; it can only shift it from one place to another.
unix is stronger as a whole the less it fights among its constituent members. os-x is adding 4 million *nix users where otherwise they'rd be proprietary M$ software in the offices that use it.
the *nix brethern can't succumb to infighting, because if you split the unix camp, then M$'s homogeniety will win.
i'd rather be friends with the '4 million new unix users' than at odds with them -- an insular mentality and not cooperating with other vender's standards is what frag'd the unix camp into impotence in the past. i'd hate to see that happen again.
the answer given by a Cognitive Scientist (John Searle) is:
'THE BRAIN, AS FAR AS ITS INTRINSIC OPERATIONS
ARE CONCERNED, DOES NO INFORMATION PROCESSING...
IN THE SENSE OF 'INFORMATION' USED IN
COGNITIVE SCIENCE IT IS SIMPLY FALSE TO SAY
THAT THE BRAIN IS AN INFORMATION PROCESSING
DEVICE.'
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py1 04/searle.comp.html John Searle, Cognitive Scientist
SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT:
This brief argument has a simple logical structure and I will lay it out:
1. On the standard textbook definition, computation is defined syntactically in terms of symbol manipulation.
2. But syntax and symbols are not defined in terms of physics. Though symbol tokens are always physical tokens, "symbol" and "same symbol" are not defined in terms of physical features. Syntax, in short, is not intrinsic to physics.
3. This has the consequence that computation is not discovered in the physics, it is assigned to it. Certain physical phenomena are assigned or used or programmed or interpreted syntactically. Syntax and symbols are observer relative.
4. It follows that you could not discover that the brain or anything else was intrinsically a digital computer, although you could assign a computational interpretation to it as you could to anything else. The point is not that the claim "The brain is a digital computer" is false. Rather it does not get up to the level of falsehood. It does not have a clear sense. You will have misunderstood my account if you think that I am arguing that it is simply false that the brain is a digital computer. The question "Is the brain a digital computer?" is as ill defined as the questions "Is it an abacus?", "Is it a book?", or "Is it a set of symbols?", "Is it a set of mathematical formulae?"
5. Some physical systems facilitate the computational use much better than others. That is why we build, program, and use them. In such cases we are the homunculus in the system interpreting the physics in both syntactical and semantic terms.
6. But the causal explanations we then give do not cite causal properties different from the physics of the implementation and the intentionality of the homunculus.
7. The standard, though tacit, way out of this is to commit the homunculus fallacy. The humunculus fallacy is endemic to computational models of cognition and cannot be removed by the standard recursive decomposition arguments. They are addressed to a different question.
8. We cannot avoid the foregoing results by supposing that the brain is doing "information processing". THE BRAIN, AS FAR AS ITS INTRINSIC OPERATIONS ARE CONCERNED, DOES NO INFORMATION PROCESSING. It is a specific biological organ and its specific neurobiological processes cause specific forms of intentionality. In the brain, intrinsically, there are neurobiological processes and sometimes they cause consciousness. But that is the end of the story.
John Searle, Cognitive Scientist, 'Is the Brain a Digital Computer' http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/P apers/Py104/searle.comp.html
* || Something physical in the brain/nervous system corresponds
|| to human knowledge does it not?
|
| nobel prize winning neurologist JOHN ECCLES*,
| claims that what we know / memories have NO LOCALISATION in the BRAIN,
| and are an aspect of MIND (WHICH HE CLAIMS DOES NOT ARISE AS AN
| AGGREGATE OF BRAIN FUNCTION). although there is localisation of
| facility to carry-out impulses of WILL, ONCE MADE.
|
|* http://almaz.com/nobel/medicine/1963a.html
| http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/science/prat-b ra.htm
|
| Sir John Eccles: M.S. and B.S. University Melbourne,
| M.A. and D.Phil. OXFORD, President of Australian Academy of Sciences,
| AUTHOR OF OVER 500 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS AND ONE OF THE LEADING LIVING
| AUTHORITIES ON THE HUMAN BRAIN. WON NOBEL PRIZE FOR MEDICINE AND
| PHYSIOLOGY. Wrote *The Brain And The Unity Of Conscious Experience*
| (Cambridge University Press)
The Turing test enshrines the temptation to think that if something
behaves as if it had certain mental processes, then it must actually
have those mental processes. And this is part of the behaviourist's
mistaken assumption that in order to be scientific, psychology must
confine its study to externally observable behaviour. Paradoxically,
this residual behaviourism is tied to a residual dualism..... The
mind, they suppose, is something formal and abstract, not a part of
the wet slimy stuff in our heads....unless one accepts the idea that
the mind is completely independent of the brain or of any other
physically specific system, one could not possibly hope to create
minds just by designing programs. (Searle 1990a, p. 31)
the point of searle's chinese room is to see if 'understanding' is involved in the process of computation. if you can 'process' the symbols of the cards without understanding them (since you're using a wordbook and a programme to do it) - by putting yourself in the place of the computer, you yourself can ask yourself if you required understanding to do it.
since Searle has generally debunked the Turing Test with the Chineese Room -- and you post only the Turing Test -- i'd like to ask you personally:
What is your own response to the Chineese Room argument (or do you just ignore it)?
free software and open source operates on premises that are remarkably similair to the ideas of SOCIAL THREEFOLDING.
basically, instead of a tee-ter-totter of supply and demand*, it works more like a transistor -- regulating the supply and demand in accordance with actual human need.
that's a lot like free software -- people have software needs, and they need to support the livelihood of programmers for the duration of the time they are creating a software product.
but the human need (daily supply for food, house, machines) is not directly connected to the VALUE he creates for the money it takes to support his/her life. there's a disconnect.
so supporting the producers takes up a certain amount of value, which sends out much greater value to the community 'for free' - in terms of sharing source and code with anyone that OPTS-INTO the POOL.
for working within this sort of framework, there's no better (heavy-reading but short 7 pages) article here.:
they're the guys that INVENTED procedural real-time 3D graphics...
Derivative is dedicated to advance the way people make art. Derivative produces innovative tools for designing and performing interactive 3D artworks and live visuals.
Touch 101, the Derivative product family, is a new artform which enables you to create interactive 3D visuals for the web, interactive art installations and live performance. Touch is a unified content development environment that combines 3D modeling, animation, MIDI sequencing, QuickTime mixing and more.
It would be regarded as quite out of the question to study the movements of a magnet-needle on the Earth's surface in such a way as to try to explain these movements solely out of what can be observed within the space occupied by the needle. The movements of the magnet-needle are, as you know, brought into connection with the magnetism of the Earth. We connect the momentary direction of the needle with the direction of the Earth's magnetism, that is, with the line of direction which can be drawn between the north and south magnetic poles of the Earth. When it is a question of explaining the phenomena presented by the magnetic needle, we go out of the region of the needle itself and try to enter, with the facts that have been collected towards an explanation, into the totality which alone affords the opportunity to explain phenomena, the manifestations of which belong to this totality. This rule of method is certainly observed in regard to some phenomena, - to those, I should say, the significance of which is fairly obvious. But it is not observed when it is a question of explaining and understanding more complicated phenomena.
Just as it is impossible to explain the phenomena of the magnetic needle from the needle itself, it is equally and fundamentally impossible to explain the phenomena relating to the organism from out of the organism itself, or from connections which do not belong to a totality, to a whole. And just for this reason, because there is so little inclination to reach the realm of totalities in order to find explanations, we arrive at those results put forward by the modern scientific method in which the wider connections are almost entirely left out of the picture. This method encloses the phenomena, whatever they may be, within the field of vision of the microscope; while the celestial phenomena are restricted to what is observable externally, with the help of instruments. In seeking for explanations, no attempt is made to consider the necessity of reaching out to the surrounding totality within which a phenomenon is localised...
Suppose someone looks at the needle of a compass, finds it pointing from South to North, from North to South, and then decides that the forces that set the needle in the North-South direction lie in the needle itself. He would certainly not be considered a physicist today. A physicist brings the needle of the compass into connection with what is called earthly magnetism. No matter what theories people evolve, it is simply impossible to attribute the direction of the needle to forces lying within the needle itself. It must be brought into relation with the universe.
In studying organic life today, the relationship of the organic to the universe is usually regarded as quite secondary. But suppose it were indeed true that merely on account of their different positions the liver and the brain are actually related quite differently to universal forces outside the human being. In that case we could never arrive at an explanation of the human being by way of pure empiricism. An explanation is possible only if we are able to say what part the whole universe plays in molding the brain and the liver, in the same sense as the earth plays its part in the direction taken by the needle in the compass.
Suppose we are tracing back the stream of heredity. We begin with the ancestors, pass on to the present generation, and then to the offspring, both in the case of animals and of human beings. We take into account what we find -- as naturally we must -- but we reckon merely with processes observed to lie immediately within the human being. It hardly ever occurs to us to ask whether under certain conditions in the human organism it is possible for universal forces to work in the most varied ways upon the fertilized germ. Nor do we ask: Is it perhaps impossible to explain the formation of the fertilized germ cell if we remain within the confines of the human being himself? Must we not relate this germ cell to the whole universe?
In orthodox science today, the forces that work in from the universe are considered secondary. To a certain limited extent they are taken into consideration, but they are always secondary. And now you may say: "Yes, but modern science leads us to a point where such questions no longer arise. It is antiquated to relate the human organs to the universe!" In the way in which this is often done, it is antiquated, but the fact that generally such questions do not arise today is due entirely to our scientific education. Our education in science confines us to this purely sense-oriented empirical mode of research, and we never come to the point of raising questions such as I have posed hypothetically by way of introduction. But the extent to which man is able to advance in knowledge and action in every sphere of life depends upon raising questions. Where questions never arise, a person is living in a kind of scientific fog. Such an individual is himself dimming his free outlook upon reality, and it is only when things no longer fit into his scheme of thought that he begins to realize the limitations of his conceptions.
i have seen a 150 year old wood nail that has fused itself into a piece of rock due to the natural properties of molecular leeching.
the smaller you pack your bits on a hard drive. the more data you squeeze into a square inch, the sooner it will give way to molecular leeching and become a paperweight.
a 20Mb hard drive from 20 years ago (1980's) will last longer than a 20gig drive front 2002.
hemp paper lasts longer than tree-based paper. if you really want long-lasting. you're better off printing your documents on hemp paper than storing it on a CD-ROM or hard-drive.
i've also been to the british museum and seen the original rosetta stone.
alas - the CD-Roms ABOUT the rosetta stone will probably not last a fraction as long as the original.
whatever you get the machine to do for you - you pay for in letting your own ability to do it atrophy.
If you never learn it manually and always have a machine do it for you - then you're slave to the machine.
once you've Learned It without the machine, then the machine becomes an aid. but if you never actually learn it yourself, then you're slave to the machine.
once you know how to do it manually, then there's a place for letting the machine take the drudgery out of it for you - that's what computers are for after all.
but how many times have i been to a store, and the cashier didn't even know how to give correct change when the register doesn't tell them the right amount!?
protonman -- greetings. YOU USE *superlative* almost As Much as me...;->
i went through you strawman critique of searle.
you might want to ponder him a bit.
the point of searle's chinese room is to see if 'understanding' is involved in the process of computation. if you can 'process' the symbols of the cards without understanding them (since you're using a wordbook and a programme to do it) - by putting yourself in the place of the computer, you yourself can ask yourself if you required understanding to do it.
now when you go and say that he ignores the people outside who are getting fooled, then you once again remove yourself of the possibility of knowing if you involved 'understanding' in the process that was observed by the externals.
which leads me to wonder if you pondered him sufficiently. so i had another go at your long letter, and it seems that in some parts you agree searle only to say that he doesn't need to make the argument because its obvious. you said you'd never had anyone tell you that they thought 'the brain was a computer'. that your experience, and i've added it to my points of reference. but in my experience, there are many lay-people that through various mis-information and popular media - many come to believe from the persuasion of others (since it isn't exactly an original thought these days to declare) - 'brains are computers'. i've been trying to conince a fellow for over a year to the contrary, and he's done and convinced himself that his own experience of consciousness is merely the result of a sufficient algorithm running on the hardware of his brain. if you don't believe that, and don't think that searle needs to debunk it because its so obvious - then why so much strong opposition to his argument? i've seen people get downright religious in believing that men are machines instead of humans.
i agree that meaning and understanding is brought to an object by the beholder.
they have a meaning, but the meaning needs to be *discovered*.
if you ponder and tinker at a watch long enough, you get to understand the thought the watchmaker put into it.
not everything in subjective. its a matter of finding the objective *through* the subjective.
It is said that a Machine Could Generate its own Concepts.
But concepts aren't generated - the thought of a triangle isn't arbitrary (although its specific representation may be) - it is a REAL thing.
if this weren't so, there would be no grounds for any understanding at all between entities if all things were independently and arbitrarily contrived.
some people believe they manufacture their own concepts, but then where would the information for what we know about the world derive from? it would have to seep into us somehow from what a thing is into our understanding ABOUT it. this is the basis of the 'Symbol Grounding Problem'.
but that isn't necessary, because cognition (as a real process which we experience) completes the perception - the concept is that part of the given which isn't revealed to physical senses, but only to the pondering intellect.
thinking is an eyeball for concepts.
this machine builds up a database of what people have 'seen'. its a 'concept logger'.
This brief argument has a simple logical structure and I will lay it out:
1. On the standard textbook definition, computation is defined syntactically in terms of symbol manipulation.
2. But syntax and symbols are not defined in terms of physics. Though symbol tokens are always physical tokens, "symbol" and "same symbol" are not defined in terms of physical features. Syntax, in short, is not intrinsic to physics.
3. This has the consequence that computation is not discovered in the physics, it is assigned to it. Certain physical phenomena are assigned or used or programmed or interpreted syntactically. Syntax and symbols are observer relative.
4. It follows that you could not discover that the brain or anything else was intrinsically a digital computer, although you could assign a computational interpretation to it as you could to anything else. The point is not that the claim "The brain is a digital computer" is false. Rather it does not get up to the level of falsehood. It does not have a clear sense. You will have misunderstood my account if you think that I am arguing that it is simply false that the brain is a digital computer. The question "Is the brain a digital computer?" is as ill defined as the questions "Is it an abacus?", "Is it a book?", or "Is it a set of symbols?", "Is it a set of mathematical formulae?"
5. Some physical systems facilitate the computational use much better than others. That is why we build, program, and use them. In such cases we are the homunculus in the system interpreting the physics in both syntactical and semantic terms.
6. But the causal explanations we then give do not cite causal properties different from the physics of the implementation and the intentionality of the homunculus.
7. The standard, though tacit, way out of this is to commit the homunculus fallacy. The humunculus fallacy is endemic to computational models of cognition and cannot be removed by the standard recursive decomposition arguments. They are addressed to a different question.
8. We cannot avoid the foregoing results by supposing that the brain is doing "information processing". THE BRAIN, AS FAR AS ITS INTRINSIC OPERATIONS ARE CONCERNED, DOES NO INFORMATION PROCESSING. It is a specific biological organ and its specific neurobiological processes cause specific forms of intentionality. In the brain, intrinsically, there are neurobiological processes and sometimes they cause consciousness. But that is the end of the story.
John Searle, Cognitive Scientist, 'Is the Brain a Digital Computer' http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/P apers/Py104 / earle.comp.html
--| THE TRANSITION FROM THE EMPIRICAL TO THE IDEAL |---
We take hold of a warm object, for example. The scientist will tell us: What you are calling the heat or warmth is the effect on your own nerves. Objectively, there is the movement of molecules and atoms. These you can study, after the laws of mechanics. So then they study the laws of mechanics, of atoms and molecules; indeed, for a long time they imagined that by so doing they would at last contrive to explain all the phenomena of Nature. Today, of course, this hope is rather shaken. But even if we do press forward to the atom with our thinking, even then we shall have to ask - and seek the answer by experiment - How are the forces in the atom? How does the mass reveal itself in its effects, - how does it work? And if you put this question, you must ask again: How will you recognize it? You can only recognize the mass by its effects.
The customary way is to recognize the smallest unit bearer of mechanical force by its effect, in answering this question: If such a particle brings another minute particle - say, a minute particle of matter weighing one gramme - into movement, there must he some force proceeding from the matter in the one, which brings the other into movement. If then the given mass brings the other mass, weighing one gramme, into movement in such a way that the latter goes a centimetre a second faster in each successive second, the former mass will have exerted a certain force. This force we are accustomed to regard as a kind of universal unit. If we are then able to say of some force that it is so many times greater than the force needed to make a gramme go a centimetre a second quicker every second, we know the ratio between the force in question and the chosen universal unit. If we express it as a weight, it is 0.001019 grammes' weight. Indeed, to express what this kind of force involves, we must have recourse to the balance - the weighing-machine. The unit force is equivalent to the downward thrust that comes into play when 0.001019 grammes are being weighed. So then I have to express myself in terms of something very outwardly real if I want to approach what is called ÒmassÓ in this Universe. Howsoever I may think it out, I can only express the concept ÒmassÓ by introducing what I get to know in quite external ways, namely a weight. In the last resort, it is by a weight that I express the mass, and even if I then go on to atomize it, I still express it by a weight.
I have reminded you of all this, in order clearly to describe the point at which we pass, from what can still be determined Òa prioriÓ, into the realm of real Nature. We need to be very clear on this point. The truths of arithmetic, geometry and kinematics, - these we undoubtedly determine apart from external Nature. But we must also be clear, to what extent these truths are applicable to that which meets us, in effect, from quite another side - and, to begin with, in mechanics. Not till we get to mechanics, have we the content of what we call Òphenomenon of NatureÓ.
All this was clear to Goethe. Only where we pass on from kinematics to mechanics can we begin to speak at all of natural phenomena. Aware as he was of this, he knew what is the only possible relation of Mathematics to Natural Science, though Mathematics be ever so idolized even for this domain of knowledge.
To bring this home, I will adduce one more example. Even as we may think of the unit element, for the effects of Force in Nature, as a minute atom-like body which would be able to impart an acceleration of a centimetre per second per second to a gramme-weight, so too with every manifestation of Force, we shall be able to say that the force proceeds from one direction and works towards another. Thus we may well grow accustomed - for all the workings of Nature - always to look for the points from which the forces proceed. Precisely this has grown habitual, nay dominant, in Science. Indeed in many instances we really find it so. There are whole fields of phenomena which we can thus refer to the points from which the forces, dominating the phenomena, proceed. We therefore call such forces Òcentric forcesÓ, inasmuch as they always issue from point-centres. It is indeed right to think of centric forces wherever we can find so many single points from which quite definite forces, dominating a given field of phenomena, proceed. Now need the forces always come into play. It may well be that the point-centre in question only bears in it the possibility, the potentiality as it were, for such a play of forces to arise, whereas the forces do not actually come into play until the requisite conditions are fulfilled in the surrounding sphere. We shall have instances of this during the next few days. It is as though forces were concentrated at the points in question, - forces however that are not yet in action. Only when we bring about the necessary conditions, will they call forth actual phenomena in their surroundings. Yet we must recognize that in such point or space forces are concentrated, able potentially to work on their environment.
This in effect is what we always look for, when speaking of the World in terms of Physics. All physical research amounts to this: we follow up the centric forces to their centres; we try to find the points from which effects can issue, For this kind of effect in Nature, we ate obliged to assume that there are centres, charged as it were with possibilities of action in certain directions. And we have sundry means of measuring these possibilities of action; we can express in stated measures, how strongly such a point or centre has the potentiality of working. Speaking in general terms, we call the measure of a force thus centred and concentrated a ÒpotentialÓ or Òpotential forceÓ. In studying these effects of Nature we then have to trace the potentials of the centric forces, - so we may formulate it. We look for centres which we then investigate as sources of potential forces.
Such, in effect, is the line taken by that school of Science which is at pains to express everything in mechanical terms. It looks for centric forces and their potentials. In this respect our need will be to take one essential step - out into actual Nature - whereby we shall grow fully conscious of the fact: You cannot possibly understand any phenomenon in which Life plays a part if you restrict yourself to this method, looking only for the potentials of centric forces. Say you were studying the play of forces in an animal or vegetable embryo or germ-cell; with this method you would never find your way. No doubt it seems an ultimate ideal to the Science of today, to understand even organic phenomena in terms of potentials, of centric forces of some kind. It will be the dawn of a new world-conception in this realm when it is recognized that the thing cannot be done in this way, Phenomena in which Life is working can never be understood in terms of centric forces. Why, in effect, - why not? Diagrammatically, let us here imagine that we are setting out to study transient, living phenomena of Nature in terms of Physics. We look for centres, - to study the potential effects that may go out from such centres. Suppose we find the effect. If I now calculate the potentials, say for the three points a, b and c, I find that a will work thus and thus on A, B and C, or c on A', B' and C'; and so on. I should thus get a notion of how the integral effects will be, in a certain sphere, subject to the potentials of such and such centric forces. Yet in this way I could never explain any process involving Life. In effect, the forces that are essential to a living thing have no potential; they are not centric forces. If at a given point d you tried to trace the physical effects due to the influences of a, b and c, you would indeed be referring to the effects to centric forces, and you could do so. But if you want to study the effects of Life you can never do this. For these effects, there are no centres such as a or b or c. Here you will only take the right direction with your thinking when you speak thus: Say that at d there is something alive. I look for the forces to which the life is subject. I shall not find them in a, nor in b, nor in c, nor when I go still farther out. I only find them when as it were I go to the very ends of the world - and, what is more, to the entire circumference at once. Taking my start from d, I should have to go to the outermost ends of the Universe and imagine forces to the working inward from the spherical circumference from all sides, forces which in their interplay unite in d. It is the very opposite of the centric forces with their potentials. How to calculate a potential for what works inward from all sides, from the infinitudes of space? In the attempt, I should have to dismember the forces; one total force would have to be divided into ever smaller portions. Then I should get nearer and nearer the edge of the World: - the force would be completely sundered, and so would all my calculation. Here in effect it is not centric forces; it is cosmic, universal forces that are at work. Here, calculation ceases.
Once more, you have the leap - the leap, this time, from that in Nature which is not alive to that which is. In the investigation of Nature we shall only find our way aright if we know what the leap is from Kinematics to Mechanics, and again what the leap is from external, inorganic Nature into those realms that are no longer accessible to calculation, - where every attempted calculation breaks asunder and every potential is dissolved away. This second leap will take us from external inorganic Nature into living Nature, and we must realize that calculation ceases where we want to understand what is alive.
i had problems with RSI, but they went away after i switched from a rubber-membrane keyboard to a Spring action based keyboard.
the other thing that helped was: LEARN TO PLAY A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT -- if you're getting RSI from always repeating the same mechanical movements, learning to play a musical instrument gives your muscles a chance to strengthen themselves with other sorts of movements -- this helped me a lot when i had RSI, and i took up learning how to play the BASS GUITAR. this gave more variety (and rhythm) to my muscle movements, and that helped to counter-act and strengthen my fingers against the effects of the RSI.
more important than the spatial arrangement of the keys (which is in itself an important factor AFTER this) is SPRING keyboard action vs RUBBER MEMBRANE keyboard action -- nothing else matters as much as that if you want to avoid RSI.
Dvorak on a good Spring Keyboard is the only way to go.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a massive flaw in Kurzweil's Argument:
He assumes that Increased Processing Power (Quantitative Change) will somehow, automatically translate into a Qualitative Change (Logic will become Consciousness).
but it seems he doesn't understand that an increase in processor speed doesn't automatically get you a MIND.
What happens when the clock-speed slows down?
Consciousness is what persists BETWEEN clock cycles.
regards,
john
It is clear that the Brain is not equivalent of the Mind.
But it is not clear that the Mind is a Product of the Brain.
People were here.
Then they Invented Computers,
Then, based on the thing they invented, they
assume that the Brain is the equivalent of something
they dreamed up.
Why do so many people assume that the brain is a Computer?
Just like the Eyeball is a sensory organ for Light,
The Brain is a sensory organ for CONCEPTS.
regards,
john
hi - i'm ken.
and i'm barbie,
and we like windows better... really really.
everyone else uses it,
so should you.
--
ignore that man behind the curtain
(the wizard of oz)
1) obtain, and take apart a $5 calculator.
2) look at the LCD - there's a little piece of polarizing plastic in front of it - hey!
3) when i take this out, i can't see the screen.
4) stick the little piece of polarizing plastic that was taped in front of the LCD, and tape it to my glasses instead.
5) apply for New Scientist Story, and claim we invented something unique, and get slashdotted.
duh!
j
> I may remark that several facts make me suspect that
> any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light
'the eye is created by the light, for the light' (goethe)
> Einsteins "religiosity" was far more about aesthetic
> sensibility than about doctrine. He is talking
> about a feeling of wonder, not about belief.
agreed - its not about 'belief in doctrine'.
einstein's views on religion (as can be seen by reading
his essay) was much profounder than mere dogma.
because of all the BS of dogma, people often throw out
any sense of 'religious wonder' out the window along
with it - einstein nicely deliniates between that
sort of religiosity and what he calls 'cosmic religious feeling'.
regards,
john
'...to suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances
for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting
different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical
and chromatic aberration could have been formed by natural
selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.'
(CHARLES DARWIN, Origin of the Species)
if you want an essay written by EINSTEIN HIMSELF on his religious views, try here:
Einstein on Cosmic Religious Feeling
"In my view, it is the most important function
of art and science to awaken this [cosmic religious] feeling
and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
(Albert Einstein)
i've always felt it is better to go back to the ORIGINAL documents
than to read commentary ABOUT them. in addition to Darwin, there was
also Haeckel, Kant, and Steiner -- who were certainly some of darwin's
most significant fellow researchers in the area. here's a experpted chapter from
one of Darwins contemporaries circa 1886:
The TYPUS in Organic Nature
Above all, one has committed a serious error in this. One believed that the method of inorganic science should simply be taken over into the realm of organisms. One considered the method employed here to be altogether the only scientific one, and thought that for "organics" to be scientifically possible, it would have to be so in exactly the same sense in which physics is, for example. The possibility was forgotten, however, that perhaps the concept of what is scientific is much broader than "the explanation of the world according to the laws of the physical world." Even today one has not yet penetrated through to this knowledge. Instead of investigating what it is that makes the approach of the inorganic sciences scientific, and of then seeing a method that can be applied to the world of living things while adhering to the requirements that result from this investigation, one simply declared that the laws gained upon this lower stage of existence are universal.
Above all, however, one should investigate what the basis is for any scientific thinking. We have done this in our study. In the preceding chapter we have also recognized that inorganic lawfulness is not the only one in existence but is only a special case of all possible lawfulness in general. The method of physics is simply one particular case of a general scientific way of investigation in which the nature of the pertinent objects and the region this science serves are taken into consideration. If this method is extended into the organic, one obliterates the specific nature of the organic. Instead of investigating the organic in accordance with its nature, one forces upon it a lawfulness alien to it. In this way, however, by denying the organic, one will never come to know it. Such scientific conduct simply repeats, upon a higher level, what it has gained upon a lower one; and although it believes that it is bringing the higher form of existence under laws established elsewhere, this form slips away from it in its efforts, -because such scientific conduct does not know how to grasp and deal with this form in its particular nature.
All this comes from the erroneous view that the method of a science is extraneous to its objects of study, that it is not determined by these objects but rather by our own nature. It is believed that one must think in a particular way about objects, that one must indeed think about all objects -- throughout the entire universe -- in the same way. Investigations are undertaken that are supposed to show that, due to the nature of our spirit, we can think only inductively or deductively, etc.
In doing so, however, one overlooks the fact that the objects perhaps will not tolerate the way of looking at them that we want to apply to them.
A look at the views of Haeckel, who is certainly the most significant of the natural-scientific theoreticians of the present day, shows us that the objection we are making to the organic natural science of our day is entirely justified: namely, that it does not carry over into organic nature the principle of scientific contemplation in the absolute sense, but only the principle of inorganic nature.
When he demands of all scientific striving that "the causal interconnections of phenomena become recognized everywhere," when he says that "if psychic mechanics were not so infinitely complex, if we were also able to have a complete overview of the historical development of psychic functions, we would then be able to bring them all into a mathematical soul formula," then one can see clearly from this what he wants: to treat the whole world according to the stereotype of the method of the physical sciences.
This demand, however, does not underlie Darwinism in its original form but only in its present-day interpretation. We have seen that to explain a process in inorganic nature means to show its lawful emergence out of other sense-perceptible realities, to trace it back to objects that, like itself, belong to the sense world. But how does modern organic science employ the principles of adaptation and the struggle for existence (both of which we certainly do not doubt are the expression of facts)? It is believed that one can trace the character of a particular species directly back to the outer conditions in which it lived, in somewhat the same way as the heating of an object is traced back to the rays of the sun falling upon it. One forgets completely that one can never show a species' character, with all its qualities that are full of content, to be the result of these conditions. The conditions may have a determining influence, but they are not a creating cause. We can definitely say that under the influence of certain circumstances a species had to evolve in such a way that one or another organ became particularly developed; what is there as content, however, the specifically organic, cannot be derived from outer conditions. Let us say that an organic entity has the essential characteristics a b c; then, under the influence of certain outer conditions, it has evolved. Through this, its characteristics have taken on the particular form a'b'c'. When we take these influences into account we will then understand that a has evolved into the form of a', b into b', c into c'. But the specific nature of a, b, and c can never arise as the outcome of external conditions.
One must, above all, focus one's thinking on the question: From what do we then derive the content of that general "something" of which we consider the individual organic entity to be a specialized case? We know very well that the specialization comes from external influences. But we must trace the specialized shape itself back to an inner principle. We gain enlightenment as to why just this particular form has evolved when we study a being's environment. But this particular form is, after all, something in and of itself; we see that it possesses certain characteristics. We see what is essential. A content, configurated in itself, confronts the outer phenomenal world, and this content provides us with what we need in tracing those characteristics back to their source. In inorganic nature we perceive a fact and see, in order to explain it, a second, a third fact and so on; and the result is that the first fact appears to us to be the necessary consequence of the other ones. In the organic world this is not so. There, in addition to the facts, we need yet another factor. We must see what works in from outer circumstances as confronted by something that does not passively allow itself to be determined by them but rather determines itself, actively, out of itself, under the influence of the outer circumstances.
But what is that basic factor? It can, after all, be nothing other than what manifests in the particular in the form of the general. In the particular, however, a definite organism always manifests. That basic factor is therefore an organism in the form of the general: a general image of the organism, which comprises within itself all the particular forms of organisms.
Following Goethe's example, let us call this general organism typus. Whatever the word typus might mean etymologically, we are using it in this Goethean sense and never mean anything else by it than what we have indicated. This typus is not developed in all its completeness in any single organism. Only our thinking, in accordance with reason, is able to take possession of it, by drawing it forth, as a general image, from phenomena. The typus is therewith the idea of the organism: the animalness in the animal, the general plant in the specific one.
One should not picture this typus as anything rigid. It has nothing at all to do with what Agassiz, Darwin's most significant opponent, called "an incarnate creative thought of God's." The typus is something altogether fluid, from which all the particular species and genera, which one can regard as subtypes or specialized types, can be derived. The typus does not preclude the theory of evolution. It does not contradict the fact that organic forms evolve out of one another. It is only reason's protest against the view that organic development consists purely in sequential, factual (sense-perceptible) forms. It is what underlies this whole development. It is what establishes the interconnection in all this endless manifoldness. It is the inner aspect of what we experience as the outer forms of living things. The Darwinian theory presupposes the typus.
The typus is the true archetypal organism; according to how it specializes ideally, it is either archetypal plant or archetypal animal. It cannot be any one, sense-perceptibly real living being. What Haeckel or other naturalists regard as the archetypal form is already a particular shape; it is, in fact, the simplest shape of the typus. The fact that in time the typus arises in its simplest form first does not require the forms arising later to be the result of those preceding them in time. AR forms result as a consequence of the typus; the first as well as the last are manifestations of it. We must take it as the basis of a true organic science and not simply undertake to derive the individual animal and plant species out of one another. The typus runs like a red thread through all the developmental stages of the organic world. We must hold onto it and then with it travel through this great realm of many forms. Then this realm will become understandable to us. Otherwise it falls apart for us, just as the rest of the world of experience does, into an unconnected mass of particulars. In fact, even when we believe that we are leading what is later, more complicated, more compound, back to a previous simpler form and that in the latter we have something original, even then we are deceiving ourselves, for we have only derived a specific form from a specific form.
Friedrich Theodor Vischer once said of the Darwinian theory that it necessitates a revision of our concept of time. We have now arrived at a point that makes evident to us in what sense such a revision would have to occur. It would have to show that deriving something later out of something earlier is no explanation, that what is first in time is not first in principle. All deriving has to do with principles, and at best it could be shown which factors were at work such that one species of beings evolved before another one in time.
The typus plays the same role in the organic world as natural law does in the inorganic. Just as natural law provides us with the possibility of recognizing each individual occurrence as a part of one great whole, so the typus puts us in a position to regard the individual organism as a particular form of the archetypal form.
http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Books/GA002/English/GA
--
best regards,
john
Error: Your comment has too few characters per line
:-(
(so how am i suppossed to post a #$%#$% haiku!?!?)
= Error Haiku =
A Japanese academic, Kanta Matsuura, in the Economics Faculty reports:
In Japan, they have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft
error messages with their own Japanese haiku poetry, each only 17
syllables, 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second and 5 in
the third.
Your file so big.
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
Error: Your comment has too few characters per line
--The Web site you seek; Cannot be located but; Countless more exist.
--Chaos reigns within; Reflect, repent, and reboot; Order shall return.
how to post haiku, and get it past the slashdot 'lameness filter'?
too few characters per line? but that's the way it is?
slashdot lameness filter killing three-line haiku - bah!
--ABORTED effort; Close all that you have worked on; You ask far too much.
--Windows NT crashed; I am the Blue Screen of Death; No one hears your screams.
Error: Your comment has too few ch3ar4acters per lineError: quickview comment has too few character42s per line...
--Yesterday it worked; Today it is not working; Windows is like that.
E2rror: Your comment has slashdot few24 characters per line - arrgh!
--First snow, then silence; This thousand dollar screen dies; So beautifully.
Error: Your comment9 has too few characters p5er line3 Error: Your4 comment ha8s too few2 characters per3 l2ine Error: Your comment9 ha3s too few characters per22 lin2e
--With searching comes loss;; And the presence of absence; "My Novel" not found.
Error: Your comment has too few characters per lineError: Your comment has too few characters per lineErr... aaarrrhhh!
--The Tao that is seen; Is not the true Tao-until; You bring fresh toner.
--Stay the patient course; Of little worth is your ire; The network is down.
--A crash reduces; Your expensive computer; To a simple stone.
-- Three things are certain; Death, taxes, and lost data; Guess which has occurred.
--You step in the stream; But the water has moved on; This page is not here.
Error: Your comment has too few characters per line -- @#%@$% slashdot...
--Out of memory; We wish to hold the whole sky; But we never will.
--The document you're seeking; Having been erased; Must now be retyped.
--Serious error; All shortcuts have disappeared; Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
Error: Your co1mment has3 too fred george per lin6eError: Your comment has too few characters per lineEr2ror: Your comment has tooh few characters per lineError: Your comment has too few characte5rs per lineError: Your comment has too few charact6ers per lineErr6r: Your comment has 5tooh few characters per line Error: Your comment has too few ugabuga the slashdot jungle p4er lineError: Your comment has too few characters per lineError: Your comment has too few charactcers per lineError: Your co7mment has too few c4haracters per lineError: Your comment has too few character8s per lineError: Your comment has too few c8haracters per lineError: Your comment has too few characters per lineError: Your comment has too few characters per line --
-- slashdot lameness filter is haiku-hostile.
regards - johnrpenner
the brain is the substrate into which consciousness acts.
cryonics has a religious belief that our sense of Self in somehow built-up from the interaction of matter amongst itself.
however --
Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world.
For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of
thoughts about the phenomena of the world.
Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or material processes.
But, in doing so, it is already confronted by two different sets of
facts: the material world, and the thoughts about it.
The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding
them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes
place in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place
in the animal organs.
Just as he attributes mechanical and organic effects to matter,
so he credits matter in certain circumstances with the capacity
to think.
He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem
from one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to
matter instead of to himself.
And thus he is back again at his starting point.
How does matter come to think about its own nature?
Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and content
just to exist?
The materialist has turned his attention away
from the definite subject, his own I, and
has arrived at an image of something quite vague
and indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again.
The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem;
it can only shift it from one place to another.
(Rudolf Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 2)
best regards,
john.
unix is stronger as a whole the less it fights among its constituent members.
os-x is adding 4 million *nix users where otherwise they'rd
be proprietary M$ software in the offices that use it.
the *nix brethern can't succumb to infighting, because if you split the unix camp,
then M$'s homogeniety will win.
i'd rather be friends with the '4 million new unix users'
than at odds with them -- an insular mentality and not cooperating
with other vender's standards is what frag'd the unix camp into
impotence in the past. i'd hate to see that happen again.
--| IS THE BRAIN A DIGITAL COMPUTER? |-----
1 04 /searle.comp.html
P apers/Py104 /searle.comp.html
the answer given by a Cognitive Scientist (John Searle) is:
'THE BRAIN, AS FAR AS ITS INTRINSIC OPERATIONS
ARE CONCERNED, DOES NO INFORMATION PROCESSING...
IN THE SENSE OF 'INFORMATION' USED IN
COGNITIVE SCIENCE IT IS SIMPLY FALSE TO SAY
THAT THE BRAIN IS AN INFORMATION PROCESSING
DEVICE.'
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py
John Searle, Cognitive Scientist
SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT:
This brief argument has a simple logical structure
and I will lay it out:
1. On the standard textbook definition, computation is defined syntactically in terms of symbol manipulation.
2. But syntax and symbols are not defined in terms of physics. Though symbol tokens are always physical tokens, "symbol" and "same symbol" are not defined in terms of physical features. Syntax, in short, is not intrinsic to physics.
3. This has the consequence that computation is not discovered in the physics, it is assigned to it. Certain physical phenomena are assigned or used or programmed or interpreted syntactically. Syntax and symbols are observer relative.
4. It follows that you could not discover that the brain or anything else was intrinsically a digital computer, although you could assign a computational interpretation to it as you could to anything else. The point is not that the claim "The brain is a digital computer" is false. Rather it does not get up to the level of falsehood. It does not have a clear sense. You will have misunderstood my account if you think that I am arguing that it is simply false that the brain is a digital computer. The question "Is the brain a digital computer?" is as ill defined as the questions "Is it an abacus?", "Is it a book?", or "Is it a set of symbols?", "Is it a set of mathematical formulae?"
5. Some physical systems facilitate the computational use much better than others. That is why we build, program, and use them. In such cases we are the homunculus in the system interpreting the physics in both syntactical and semantic terms.
6. But the causal explanations we then give do not cite causal properties different from the physics of the implementation and the intentionality of the homunculus.
7. The standard, though tacit, way out of this is to commit the homunculus fallacy. The humunculus fallacy is endemic to computational models of cognition and cannot be removed by the standard recursive decomposition arguments. They are addressed to a different question.
8. We cannot avoid the foregoing results by supposing that the brain is doing "information processing". THE BRAIN, AS FAR AS ITS INTRINSIC OPERATIONS ARE CONCERNED, DOES NO INFORMATION PROCESSING. It is a specific biological organ and its specific neurobiological processes cause specific forms of intentionality. In the brain, intrinsically, there are neurobiological processes and sometimes they cause consciousness. But that is the end of the story.
John Searle, Cognitive Scientist, 'Is the Brain a Digital Computer'
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/
--
* || Something physical in the brain/nervous system corresponds
|| to human knowledge does it not?
|
| nobel prize winning neurologist JOHN ECCLES*,
| claims that what we know / memories have NO LOCALISATION in the BRAIN,
| and are an aspect of MIND (WHICH HE CLAIMS DOES NOT ARISE AS AN
| AGGREGATE OF BRAIN FUNCTION). although there is localisation of
| facility to carry-out impulses of WILL, ONCE MADE.
|
|* http://almaz.com/nobel/medicine/1963a.html
| http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/science/prat-
|
| Sir John Eccles: M.S. and B.S. University Melbourne,
| M.A. and D.Phil. OXFORD, President of Australian Academy of Sciences,
| AUTHOR OF OVER 500 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS AND ONE OF THE LEADING LIVING
| AUTHORITIES ON THE HUMAN BRAIN. WON NOBEL PRIZE FOR MEDICINE AND
| PHYSIOLOGY. Wrote *The Brain And The Unity Of Conscious Experience*
| (Cambridge University Press)
it was curious that i found the inclusion of the Turing Test on your web-site, but i found no corresponding counter-balancing link to Searle's Chineese Room (Minds Brains and Programs).
.... The ...unless one accepts the idea that
however:
The Turing test enshrines the temptation to think that if something
behaves as if it had certain mental processes, then it must actually
have those mental processes. And this is part of the behaviourist's
mistaken assumption that in order to be scientific, psychology must
confine its study to externally observable behaviour. Paradoxically,
this residual behaviourism is tied to a residual dualism.
mind, they suppose, is something formal and abstract, not a part of
the wet slimy stuff in our heads.
the mind is completely independent of the brain or of any other
physically specific system, one could not possibly hope to create
minds just by designing programs. (Searle 1990a, p. 31)
the point of searle's chinese room is to see if 'understanding'
is involved in the process of computation. if you can 'process'
the symbols of the cards without understanding them (since you're
using a wordbook and a programme to do it) - by putting yourself
in the place of the computer, you yourself can ask yourself if
you required understanding to do it.
since Searle has generally debunked the Turing Test with the
Chineese Room -- and you post only the
Turing Test -- i'd like to ask you personally:
What is your own response to the Chineese
Room argument (or do you just ignore it)?
best regards,
john penner
free software and open source operates on premises
that are remarkably similair to the ideas of SOCIAL THREEFOLDING.
basically, instead of a tee-ter-totter of supply and demand*,
it works more like a transistor -- regulating the supply and
demand in accordance with actual human need.
that's a lot like free software -- people have software needs,
and they need to support the livelihood of programmers for the
duration of the time they are creating a software product.
but the human need (daily supply for food, house, machines)
is not directly connected to the VALUE he creates for the
money it takes to support his/her life. there's a disconnect.
so supporting the producers takes up a certain amount of value,
which sends out much greater value to the community 'for free' - in
terms of sharing source and code with anyone that OPTS-INTO the POOL.
for working within this sort of framework,
there's no better (heavy-reading but short 7 pages) article
here.:
SOCIAL THREEFOLDING
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/S
regards,
john.
try: http://www.derivativeinc.com/
they're the guys that INVENTED procedural real-time 3D graphics...
Derivative is dedicated to advance the way people make art. Derivative produces innovative tools for designing and performing interactive 3D artworks and live visuals.
Touch 101, the Derivative product family, is a new artform which enables you to create interactive 3D visuals for the web, interactive art installations and live performance. Touch is a unified content development environment that combines 3D modeling, animation, MIDI sequencing, QuickTime mixing and more.
regards,
j.
It would be regarded as quite out of the question to study the movements
m bryonicCosmo.html
t ml
of a magnet-needle on the Earth's surface in such a way as to try to
explain these movements solely out of what can be observed within the
space occupied by the needle. The movements of the magnet-needle are, as
you know, brought into connection with the magnetism of the Earth. We
connect the momentary direction of the needle with the direction of the
Earth's magnetism, that is, with the line of direction which can be
drawn between the north and south magnetic poles of the Earth. When it
is a question of explaining the phenomena presented by the magnetic
needle, we go out of the region of the needle itself and try to enter,
with the facts that have been collected towards an explanation, into the
totality which alone affords the opportunity to explain phenomena, the
manifestations of which belong to this totality. This rule of method is
certainly observed in regard to some phenomena, - to those, I should
say, the significance of which is fairly obvious. But it is not observed
when it is a question of explaining and understanding more complicated
phenomena.
Just as it is impossible to explain the phenomena of the magnetic needle
from the needle itself, it is equally and fundamentally impossible to
explain the phenomena relating to the organism from out of the organism
itself, or from connections which do not belong to a totality, to a
whole. And just for this reason, because there is so little inclination
to reach the realm of totalities in order to find explanations, we
arrive at those results put forward by the modern scientific method in
which the wider connections are almost entirely left out of the picture.
This method encloses the phenomena, whatever they may be, within the
field of vision of the microscope; while the celestial phenomena are
restricted to what is observable externally, with the help of
instruments. In seeking for explanations, no attempt is made to consider
the necessity of reaching out to the surrounding totality within which a
phenomenon is localised...
(Rudolf Steiner, Lecture Lecture X, January 10th, 1921)
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/E
--
Suppose someone looks at the needle of a compass, finds it pointing from
South to North, from North to South, and then decides that the forces
that set the needle in the North-South direction lie in the needle
itself. He would certainly not be considered a physicist today. A
physicist brings the needle of the compass into connection with what is
called earthly magnetism. No matter what theories people evolve, it is
simply impossible to attribute the direction of the needle to forces
lying within the needle itself. It must be brought into relation with
the universe.
In studying organic life today, the relationship of the organic to the
universe is usually regarded as quite secondary. But suppose it were
indeed true that merely on account of their different positions the
liver and the brain are actually related quite differently to universal
forces outside the human being. In that case we could never arrive at an
explanation of the human being by way of pure empiricism. An explanation
is possible only if we are able to say what part the whole universe
plays in molding the brain and the liver, in the same sense as the earth
plays its part in the direction taken by the needle in the compass.
Suppose we are tracing back the stream of heredity. We begin with the
ancestors, pass on to the present generation, and then to the offspring,
both in the case of animals and of human beings. We take into account
what we find -- as naturally we must -- but we reckon merely with
processes observed to lie immediately within the human being. It hardly
ever occurs to us to ask whether under certain conditions in the human
organism it is possible for universal forces to work in the most varied
ways upon the fertilized germ. Nor do we ask: Is it perhaps impossible
to explain the formation of the fertilized germ cell if we remain within
the confines of the human being himself? Must we not relate this germ
cell to the whole universe?
In orthodox science today, the forces that work in from the universe are
considered secondary. To a certain limited extent they are taken into
consideration, but they are always secondary. And now you may say: "Yes,
but modern science leads us to a point where such questions no longer
arise. It is antiquated to relate the human organs to the universe!" In
the way in which this is often done, it is antiquated, but the fact that
generally such questions do not arise today is due entirely to our
scientific education. Our education in science confines us to this
purely sense-oriented empirical mode of research, and we never come to
the point of raising questions such as I have posed hypothetically by
way of introduction. But the extent to which man is able to advance in
knowledge and action in every sphere of life depends upon raising
questions. Where questions never arise, a person is living in a kind of
scientific fog. Such an individual is himself dimming his free outlook
upon reality, and it is only when things no longer fit into his scheme
of thought that he begins to realize the limitations of his conceptions.
http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Medicine/19221026p01.h
--
MOLECULAR LEECHING
Smaller = More Ephemeral
i have seen a 150 year old wood nail that has fused itself
into a piece of rock due to the natural properties of
molecular leeching.
the smaller you pack your bits on a hard drive.
the more data you squeeze into a square inch,
the sooner it will give way to molecular leeching
and become a paperweight.
a 20Mb hard drive from 20 years ago (1980's)
will last longer than a 20gig drive front 2002.
hemp paper lasts longer than tree-based paper.
if you really want long-lasting. you're better off
printing your documents on hemp paper than
storing it on a CD-ROM or hard-drive.
i've also been to the british museum
and seen the original rosetta stone.
alas - the CD-Roms ABOUT the rosetta stone
will probably not last a fraction as long as the original.
best regards,
john.
whatever you get the machine to do for you - you pay for in letting your own ability to do it atrophy.
If you never learn it manually and always have a machine do it for you - then you're slave to the machine.
once you've Learned It without the machine, then the machine becomes an aid. but if you never actually learn it yourself, then you're slave to the machine.
once you know how to do it manually, then there's a place for letting the machine take the drudgery out of it for you - that's what computers are for after all.
but how many times have i been to a store, and the cashier didn't even know how to give correct change when the register doesn't tell them the right amount!?
john
protonman -- greetings. ;->
YOU USE *superlative* almost As Much as me...
i went through you strawman critique of searle.
you might want to ponder him a bit.
the point of searle's chinese room is to see if 'understanding'
is involved in the process of computation. if you can 'process'
the symbols of the cards without understanding them (since you're
using a wordbook and a programme to do it) - by putting yourself
in the place of the computer, you yourself can ask yourself if
you required understanding to do it.
now when you go and say that he ignores the people outside
who are getting fooled, then you once again remove yourself
of the possibility of knowing if you involved 'understanding'
in the process that was observed by the externals.
which leads me to wonder if you pondered him sufficiently.
so i had another go at your long letter, and it seems that
in some parts you agree searle only to say that he doesn't need
to make the argument because its obvious. you said you'd never
had anyone tell you that they thought 'the brain was a computer'.
that your experience, and i've added it to my points of reference.
but in my experience, there are many lay-people that through various
mis-information and popular media - many come to believe from the
persuasion of others (since it isn't exactly an original thought
these days to declare) - 'brains are computers'. i've been trying
to conince a fellow for over a year to the contrary, and he's
done and convinced himself that his own experience of consciousness
is merely the result of a sufficient algorithm running on the hardware
of his brain. if you don't believe that, and don't think that searle
needs to debunk it because its so obvious - then why so much strong
opposition to his argument? i've seen people get downright religious
in believing that men are machines instead of humans.
i agree that meaning and understanding is brought to an object
by the beholder.
they have a meaning, but the meaning needs to be *discovered*.
if you ponder and tinker at a watch long enough,
you get to understand the thought the watchmaker put into it.
not everything in subjective.
its a matter of finding the objective *through* the subjective.
merry met,
john
It is said that a Machine Could Generate its own Concepts.
P apers/Py104 / earle.comp.html
But concepts aren't generated - the thought of a triangle isn't arbitrary (although its specific representation may be) - it is a REAL thing.
if this weren't so, there would be no grounds for any understanding at all between entities if all things were independently and arbitrarily contrived.
some people believe they manufacture their own concepts, but then where would the information for what we know about the world derive from? it would have to seep into us somehow from what a thing is into our understanding ABOUT it. this is the basis of the 'Symbol Grounding Problem'.
but that isn't necessary, because cognition (as a real process which we experience) completes the perception - the concept is that part of the given which isn't revealed to physical senses, but only to the pondering intellect.
thinking is an eyeball for concepts.
this machine builds up a database of what people have 'seen'.
its a 'concept logger'.
best regards,
john
]:->
--| IS THE BRAIN A DIGITAL COMPUTER? |-----
the answer given by a Cognitive Scientist (John Searle) is:
'THE BRAIN, AS FAR AS ITS INTRINSIC OPERATIONS
ARE CONCERNED, DOES NO INFORMATION PROCESSING...
IN THE SENSE OF 'INFORMATION' USED IN
COGNITIVE SCIENCE IT IS SIMPLY FALSE TO SAY
THAT THE BRAIN IS AN INFORMATION PROCESSING
DEVICE.'
John Searle, Cognitive Scientist
SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT:
This brief argument has a simple logical structure
and I will lay it out:
1. On the standard textbook definition, computation is defined syntactically in terms of symbol manipulation.
2. But syntax and symbols are not defined in terms of physics. Though symbol tokens are always physical tokens, "symbol" and "same symbol" are not defined in terms of physical features. Syntax, in short, is not intrinsic to physics.
3. This has the consequence that computation is not discovered in the physics, it is assigned to it. Certain physical phenomena are assigned or used or programmed or interpreted syntactically. Syntax and symbols are observer relative.
4. It follows that you could not discover that the brain or anything else was intrinsically a digital computer, although you could assign a computational interpretation to it as you could to anything else. The point is not that the claim "The brain is a digital computer" is false. Rather it does not get up to the level of falsehood. It does not have a clear sense. You will have misunderstood my account if you think that I am arguing that it is simply false that the brain is a digital computer. The question "Is the brain a digital computer?" is as ill defined as the questions "Is it an abacus?", "Is it a book?", or "Is it a set of symbols?", "Is it a set of mathematical formulae?"
5. Some physical systems facilitate the computational use much better than others. That is why we build, program, and use them. In such cases we are the homunculus in the system interpreting the physics in both syntactical and semantic terms.
6. But the causal explanations we then give do not cite causal properties different from the physics of the implementation and the intentionality of the homunculus.
7. The standard, though tacit, way out of this is to commit the homunculus fallacy. The humunculus fallacy is endemic to computational models of cognition and cannot be removed by the standard recursive decomposition arguments. They are addressed to a different question.
8. We cannot avoid the foregoing results by supposing that the brain is doing "information processing". THE BRAIN, AS FAR AS ITS INTRINSIC OPERATIONS ARE CONCERNED, DOES NO INFORMATION PROCESSING. It is a specific biological organ and its specific neurobiological processes cause specific forms of intentionality. In the brain, intrinsically, there are neurobiological processes and sometimes they cause consciousness. But that is the end of the story.
John Searle, Cognitive Scientist, 'Is the Brain a Digital Computer'
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/
--
--| THE TRANSITION FROM THE EMPIRICAL TO THE IDEAL |---
We take hold of a warm object, for example. The scientist will tell us: What you are calling the heat or warmth is the effect on your own nerves. Objectively, there is the movement of molecules and atoms. These you can study, after the laws of mechanics. So then they study the laws of mechanics, of atoms and molecules; indeed, for a long time they imagined that by so doing they would at last contrive to explain all the phenomena of Nature. Today, of course, this hope is rather shaken. But even if we do press forward to the atom with our thinking, even then we shall have to ask - and seek the answer by experiment - How are the forces in the atom? How does the mass reveal itself in its effects, - how does it work? And if you put this question, you must ask again: How will you recognize it? You can only recognize the mass by its effects.
The customary way is to recognize the smallest unit bearer of mechanical force by its effect, in answering this question: If such a particle brings another minute particle - say, a minute particle of matter weighing one gramme - into movement, there must he some force proceeding from the matter in the one, which brings the other into movement. If then the given mass brings the other mass, weighing one gramme, into movement in such a way that the latter goes a centimetre a second faster in each successive second, the former mass will have exerted a certain force. This force we are accustomed to regard as a kind of universal unit. If we are then able to say of some force that it is so many times greater than the force needed to make a gramme go a centimetre a second quicker every second, we know the ratio between the force in question and the chosen universal unit. If we express it as a weight, it is 0.001019 grammes' weight. Indeed, to express what this kind of force involves, we must have recourse to the balance - the weighing-machine. The unit force is equivalent to the downward thrust that comes into play when 0.001019 grammes are being weighed. So then I have to express myself in terms of something very outwardly real if I want to approach what is called ÒmassÓ in this Universe. Howsoever I may think it out, I can only express the concept ÒmassÓ by introducing what I get to know in quite external ways, namely a weight. In the last resort, it is by a weight that I express the mass, and even if I then go on to atomize it, I still express it by a weight.
I have reminded you of all this, in order clearly to describe the point at which we pass, from what can still be determined Òa prioriÓ, into the realm of real Nature. We need to be very clear on this point. The truths of arithmetic, geometry and kinematics, - these we undoubtedly determine apart from external Nature. But we must also be clear, to what extent these truths are applicable to that which meets us, in effect, from quite another side - and, to begin with, in mechanics. Not till we get to mechanics, have we the content of what we call Òphenomenon of NatureÓ.
All this was clear to Goethe. Only where we pass on from kinematics to mechanics can we begin to speak at all of natural phenomena. Aware as he was of this, he knew what is the only possible relation of Mathematics to Natural Science, though Mathematics be ever so idolized even for this domain of knowledge.
To bring this home, I will adduce one more example. Even as we may think of the unit element, for the effects of Force in Nature, as a minute atom-like body which would be able to impart an acceleration of a centimetre per second per second to a gramme-weight, so too with every manifestation of Force, we shall be able to say that the force proceeds from one direction and works towards another. Thus we may well grow accustomed - for all the workings of Nature - always to look for the points from which the forces proceed. Precisely this has grown habitual, nay dominant, in Science. Indeed in many instances we really find it so. There are whole fields of phenomena which we can thus refer to the points from which the forces, dominating the phenomena, proceed. We therefore call such forces Òcentric forcesÓ, inasmuch as they always issue from point-centres. It is indeed right to think of centric forces wherever we can find so many single points from which quite definite forces, dominating a given field of phenomena, proceed. Now need the forces always come into play. It may well be that the point-centre in question only bears in it the possibility, the potentiality as it were, for such a play of forces to arise, whereas the forces do not actually come into play until the requisite conditions are fulfilled in the surrounding sphere. We shall have instances of this during the next few days. It is as though forces were concentrated at the points in question, - forces however that are not yet in action. Only when we bring about the necessary conditions, will they call forth actual phenomena in their surroundings. Yet we must recognize that in such point or space forces are concentrated, able potentially to work on their environment.
This in effect is what we always look for, when speaking of the World in terms of Physics. All physical research amounts to this: we follow up the centric forces to their centres; we try to find the points from which effects can issue, For this kind of effect in Nature, we ate obliged to assume that there are centres, charged as it were with possibilities of action in certain directions. And we have sundry means of measuring these possibilities of action; we can express in stated measures, how strongly such a point or centre has the potentiality of working. Speaking in general terms, we call the measure of a force thus centred and concentrated a ÒpotentialÓ or Òpotential forceÓ. In studying these effects of Nature we then have to trace the potentials of the centric forces, - so we may formulate it. We look for centres which we then investigate as sources of potential forces.
Such, in effect, is the line taken by that school of Science which is at pains to express everything in mechanical terms. It looks for centric forces and their potentials. In this respect our need will be to take one essential step - out into actual Nature - whereby we shall grow fully conscious of the fact: You cannot possibly understand any phenomenon in which Life plays a part if you restrict yourself to this method, looking only for the potentials of centric forces. Say you were studying the play of forces in an animal or vegetable embryo or germ-cell; with this method you would never find your way. No doubt it seems an ultimate ideal to the Science of today, to understand even organic phenomena in terms of potentials, of centric forces of some kind. It will be the dawn of a new world-conception in this realm when it is recognized that the thing cannot be done in this way, Phenomena in which Life is working can never be understood in terms of centric forces. Why, in effect, - why not? Diagrammatically, let us here imagine that we are setting out to study transient, living phenomena of Nature in terms of Physics. We look for centres, - to study the potential effects that may go out from such centres. Suppose we find the effect. If I now calculate the potentials, say for the three points a, b and c, I find that a will work thus and thus on A, B and C, or c on A', B' and C'; and so on. I should thus get a notion of how the integral effects will be, in a certain sphere, subject to the potentials of such and such centric forces. Yet in this way I could never explain any process involving Life. In effect, the forces that are essential to a living thing have no potential; they are not centric forces. If at a given point d you tried to trace the physical effects due to the influences of a, b and c, you would indeed be referring to the effects to centric forces, and you could do so. But if you want to study the effects of Life you can never do this. For these effects, there are no centres such as a or b or c. Here you will only take the right direction with your thinking when you speak thus: Say that at d there is something alive. I look for the forces to which the life is subject. I shall not find them in a, nor in b, nor in c, nor when I go still farther out. I only find them when as it were I go to the very ends of the world - and, what is more, to the entire circumference at once. Taking my start from d, I should have to go to the outermost ends of the Universe and imagine forces to the working inward from the spherical circumference from all sides, forces which in their interplay unite in d. It is the very opposite of the centric forces with their potentials. How to calculate a potential for what works inward from all sides, from the infinitudes of space? In the attempt, I should have to dismember the forces; one total force would have to be divided into ever smaller portions. Then I should get nearer and nearer the edge of the World: - the force would be completely sundered, and so would all my calculation. Here in effect it is not centric forces; it is cosmic, universal forces that are at work. Here, calculation ceases.
Once more, you have the leap - the leap, this time, from that in Nature which is not alive to that which is. In the investigation of Nature we shall only find our way aright if we know what the leap is from Kinematics to Mechanics, and again what the leap is from external, inorganic Nature into those realms that are no longer accessible to calculation, - where every attempted calculation breaks asunder and every potential is dissolved away. This second leap will take us from external inorganic Nature into living Nature, and we must realize that calculation ceases where we want to understand what is alive.
(Rudolf Steiner, The Light Course, Lecture 1)
Light Course, Lecture 1, Rudolf Steiner
i had problems with RSI, but they went away after i switched from a rubber-membrane keyboard to a Spring action based keyboard.
the other thing that helped was: LEARN TO PLAY A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT -- if you're getting RSI from always repeating the same mechanical movements, learning to play a musical instrument gives your muscles a chance to strengthen themselves with other sorts of movements -- this helped me a lot when i had RSI, and i took up learning how to play the BASS GUITAR. this gave more variety (and rhythm) to my muscle movements, and that helped to counter-act and strengthen my fingers against the effects of the RSI.
regards,
john.
more important than the spatial arrangement of the keys (which is in itself an important factor AFTER this) is SPRING keyboard action vs RUBBER MEMBRANE keyboard action -- nothing else matters as much as that if you want to avoid RSI.
Dvorak on a good Spring Keyboard is the only way to go.
regards,
john