Re: Stating the obvious...... or a stretch

Let me quote some scatterd notes of mine concerning the philopsophy of
mind and a level of decription approach to reconciling naturalism and
phenomenalogy, which implies that machines can be as intelligent as
people, as a rebuttal.

---
What I have been calling a theory of levels is probably more accurately
named a theory of "levels of description", in which the same system
(i.e. the mind/brain) can be described in different ways (i.e.
physical, computational, phenomenal). Each level of description is
"real" in the sense that it a) describes the activity of the system
b) has "casual power".
---
Possible objections to levels of description:
One common objection to a level based description is that the higher
levels (i.e. the phenomenal) no longer have real casual power (the
epiphenomenalism objection). This is to assert that since the physical
level provides a cause for every action there is no room for the
phenomenal level to be the cause of anything. I maintain, of course,
that this objection does not hold water for the following reason: we
commonly accept that events may have multiple causes, in this case my
actions have two (or more) causes, the physical, neuro-chemical cause
and the phenomenal, my willing it, cause. For example consider this
word processing program. On one level of description my user input is
causing words to appear on the page. On another level of description
the flow of electricity on silicon circuits causes the words to appear.
Both causes are equally "real". The situation is the same for the
human mind.

Another objection is that we don't "feel" the physical level
controlling our actions, and that it "feels" like we have free
will, that our actions are not casually determined by the atomic level.
I would hold that this objection rests on the false assumption that
somehow our physical minds and our phenomenal minds are two different
things, and that they could somehow work in opposite directions.
However under the "levels of description" theory they are really
the same thing, and thus the objection is in some way nonsensical.
Your will to lift your arm can be identified with some physical process
occurring in your brain, this is not to affirm some version of identity
theory of course, but simply to state that our thoughts have a
reflection in the physics of our brain, and that the physics of our
brain reflects our thoughts.

--
On clarity:
One of the benefits of viewing any description of the mind though the
lenses of "levels of description" is that it can help prevent some
of the category mistakes concerning the operation of the mind that we
might be tempted to make. For example in which areas of the brain is
activity conscious? Which neuron firings are conscious and which
unconscious? None of them. None of the physical / biological activity
of the brain is conscious. Only things in the phenomenal realm can
meaningfully be distinguished as conscious. We can be aware of the
activity of our brain, but only by inference. For example our
blind-spot is a defect in the physical make-up of our eyes, and yet we
are aware of it only by inference. Likewise we are only conscious of
the computational level (see below) of our minds by inference when
exposed to such phenomena as change blindness or optical illusions.
With this in mind we should separate our levels clearly when
describing the mind. It is accurate to say that light enters the eye,
activates neurons there, and then the signal propagates to other areas
of the brain, in a chain reaction of neuron firings. It is also valid
to say that we have a visual experience which prompts us to have
thoughts and actions, but it is invalid to say that light enters the
eye, stimulating neurons, which in turn causes us to have a visual
experience, ect. This way of describing the mind leads to the
traditional confusion concerning the distinction between the phenomenal
and the physical, when they are improperly conjoined in this way.

---
On a computational level of description:
Any "levels of description" theory must include the
physical/biological level and the phenomenal/conscious level. Is there
a good reason for including other levels of description? Let us
consider a computational description. When I speak of a computational
model I am implying the following: that the operation of the object in
question can be described as a set of functions that operate on
information, and in turn generate information. The information
processed by a function can come from other functions or be an external
input into the system. Likewise function output may be directed to
other functions or become output from the system, or both. The
operation of each function can be specified algorithmically, i.e. a
finite set of operations and control structures, and likewise
determining where information goes and comes from can be determined
finitistically (sp?). Functions may operate in sequence or in
parallel, and may take different amounts of time to complete their
operations. You might say that this doesn't sound much like how a
computer is supposed to operate; after all doesn't a computer deal
only with numbers, sequentially? This vision of a computer is on a
much lower level of the operations that I have described. These
operations can be implemented, or simulated, on any computer system and
reflect how programs are structured.
Do we have any reason for supposing such a model might reflect the
workings of the human mind? To me the evidence seems to point that
such a model is appropriate. Consider how the brain is studied.
Scientists identify the function of various parts of the brain, and how
they communicate with the rest of the brain. Such a division is
basically indistinguishable from the computational model as I have
proposed it. So if the current way of studying the brain is on the
right track than a computational level of description seems a natural
way of describing the brain from a certain viewpoint.
The implications of accepting such a level of description are obvious.
It implies that such a model could exist as part of a computer
program/simulation, and thus we would expect to find the higher level
of description, the phenomenal, there as well, which means that such a
computer system should rightfully be called conscious.

.

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