[MD] Computers vs. Brains

[Ham Priday]

Arlo --


It's futile to discuss metaphysical concepts with you, Arlo, since you 
reject the fundamental separation of mind and matter.  For you everything 
must be explained as a biological process, which is defeating the very 
meaning of metaphysics -- the study of what transcends differentiated 
existence.  Because you don't acknowledge such a reality, you rework my 
answers as if I'm talking about the space/time world of appearances.

For example:

[Arlo]:
> YOU said "conscious awareness" is not part of the
> organic mesh in our heads. I asked, so how does it
> come to be embedded in there?  How is it that
> "conscious awareness", which you claim is not biological,
> is up there in the gray matter of our heads.
> How does it get there?

Conscious awareness is NOT "up there in the gray matter of our heads."  I 
never said it was.  How else do you interpret my statement that conscious 
awareness "is not the organism or any part of it"?  The brain and all its 
nerve components are the "beingness" that orient the conscious self to a 
particular being-aware relative to a particular locus in time and space. 
Our physical body and its sensory apparatus is also the "intellectual 
instrument" which objectifies value into the continuum of discrete objects 
and events perceived as our existence.

> A lot of words, nothing close to an answer. Again, if the
> "conscious self" is not part of the human organism, where
> is it? How does it come to be "identified with a particular
> human organism"? Is it floating around space and latching
> onto nearby neural energy?  Is it "placed" there by God?
>
> Again, if as a "philosopher" you claim that "conscious
> awareness" is not part of the human organism, but is
> "identified with a particular organism", you should be at the
> least able to answer where it comes from and how this happens.
>
> What's funny (funny-sad, not funny-haha) again is that
> you already DO answer the question by denying what
> answers others have given. You've said its NOT biology
> from whence conscious awareness derives, and you've
> said its not social activity either. So its NOT these two things,
> you KNOW that, but you can't answer in any way what
> you think it IS?
>
> Don't ask, don't tell?

My creation hypothesis is elaborated fully in Section 3 of my thesis at 
www.essentialism.net/mechanic.htm#reality but is too involved to expound in 
this limited space.  Consider the following a précis of that hypothesis:

Identity is a function of differentiation.  We humans do not choose the 
organism with which we are identitifed in life.  That selection is the 
genetic process of nature.  Choice begins with cognizant awareness which, in 
existential terms, is contiguous with the development of the central nervous 
system.  As I said, this is a "process", not a spontaneous event like the 
Big Bang.  Any existential event is a negation of absolute Essence.  Rather 
than "being placed there by God", I prefer to think of individual 
self-awareness as a negated microcosm of absolute sensibility.

Does that answer your question?

--Ham