constant escape

winter withered, warm
I just don't think its that unbelievable that something like consciousness is an emergent phenomenon with a variety of necessary antecedents. I don't know much about logic gates, but apparently you can build a computer using only nand gates. So everything we consider a function of computers is reducible to these base things - and consciousness would just be a higher order ramification/consequent of such functional units.
 

vimothy

yurp
I just don't think its that unbelievable that something like consciousness is an emergent phenomenon with a variety of necessary antecedents. I don't know much about logic gates, but apparently you can build a computer using only nand gates. So everything we consider a function of computers is reducible to these base things - and consciousness would just be a higher order ramification/consequent of such functional units.
you can't even build a mathematician using only nand gates, much less a yuman
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
I think so too, only my first guess is that it is a novel quality, a higher tier quality, enabled primarily by a higher quantity. Could be as simple as the number of neurons, or the arrangement of neurons, or it could be some other kind of unit that is constitutive of or constituted by neurons - beyond my comprehension.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
you can't even build a mathematician using only nand gates, much less a yuman
Yeah as far as I know you're right, I was just using nand gates as an example of how something as complex as a computer can be built using a single kind of unit, yet alone when you factor in other logic gates. But then again, maybe those other gates are just expedients, and can be replaced by such and such arrangements of nand gates. Totally don't know there.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
I wouldn't say that the human brain is properly categorizable as a computer, given how we seem to define computers. That said, I can't provide a robust definition, on the spot.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Yeah I think identifying the human brain as a computer is facile, but I think we can generalize either one of them and end up in the same radical category - its just a matter of if/how this category is useful, no?
 
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