debd

I think if a sense organ did not encounter its intended stimuli often enough and in a significant way enough then evolution wouldn't have selected tha...

Yes certainly it is possible. We were unaware of microorganisms till the microscope was invented. If some organism whose temporal perception is much l...

All of us humans have a Broca's area in our brain. Its gross macrostructure is similar across all humans and it bestows each one of us with the capaci...

What do you mean by "chaos manifests"? I reiterate again that the neural networks exhibit chaotic dynamics, this has a precise mathematical formulatio...

I think we are talking past each other. What do you mean when you say people should exhibit chaotic behavior? It is not a question of if, experiments ...

Chaotic systems are mathematically defined systems, it does not mean people will behave chaotically. You are confusing chaotic systems with the common...

Even simple neural networks are chaotic systems. This has been shown experimentally since the 1980s and is now a well established fact. See here and h...

It is difficult, but possible. If we are able to fully map and simulate the brain then we can ascribe a certain degree of probability that it will hav...

Cellular differentiation is a result of evolution. There are multiple different cells each performing specialized functions within our body. For a suf...

The instructions within the room and the person along with any other paraphernalia forms the information processing part inside the chinese room, anal...

Well, the neural network and the full connectome of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans have been fully mapped. Simulating this neural network produce...

That's because we are replacing the chinese room with the brain and the person inside the room is being replaced by a nerual network.

Even if someone is actually able to construct a Chinese room, I believe it is impossible to ascribe the notion of “understanding” the language in the ...

I believe it is all of it. We are not born self-aware, we learn to be self-aware and we can lose it as easily. It begins with the basics, the identifi...

We don't know. Unless we actually know how consciousness occurs within ourselves, we won't be able to judge the presence of inner life in anything els...

Let us consider our sense of awareness as I'm most familiar with that. there are multiple levels of self-awareness in humans, the lowest being not in ...

Consider the whole system of the chinese room. There must be a light source in there so that our man can read, there are stacks of shelves or somethin...

Yes, I agree with you but also think its a bit more complicated. The split brain example is interesting but needs to be examined a bit more. Not all p...

Yes, surely.

Nice. I shall use this in future.

I am not trying to find objective truth. In a narrow sense, something struck me odd about the chinese room argument and I'm trying to sound it out. In...

I think there has been considerable progress made. The rate of progress is not comparable to other sciences or even within subfields of biology becaus...

Well it can certainly be proven that atleast our consciousness is due to the activity of neurons. Destroy enough of them and we cease to have consciou...

With advances in technology we will have a far more detailed picture for comparing. Hence the gaps in which this uniqueness can hide will become small...

Yes, I believe the superorganism that would be the Chinese room will pass the Turing test. If it is possible to construct then it would be a true AI.

This is what is bugging me about the chinese room. It is restricted and doesn't capture the whole thing. Only the whole system of the room can be cons...

Yes, this has been demonstrated and the effect of paralyzing agents has been isolated from that of anaesthetic agents. Its called the Tunstall isolate...

We can look inside our brains and see. Consider my brain and yours. We undergo fMRI and EEG scans when we are awake and find both of us have similar f...

I'm not saying a silicon network with a similar complexity as that of a neuronal network will not be conscious. Instead I think it will have and I sai...

If he internalizes all the rules in his head(brain) then effectively he is learning and understanding chinese. This is what we do when we learn a new ...

No, just that the person passing the instruction is replaced by a neuron or a network of neurons passing the instructions without having any intrinsic...

I second this. If we consider the statement of a supposedly conscious computer to be unreliable then the same should apply to any other person also an...

Thanks, this is what I was trying to articulate.

Yes, that's why I used the analogy of the brain and its constituent neurons which we consider to be conscious. Consider a neuronal network that is res...

I think that consciousness or understanding or perception at a particular point of time is the function of the structural and physiological state of t...

Yes, I agree. I am trying to draw an analogy in which a neuron is the man in the chinese room and our whole brain is the room itself. Both the man and...

This conceptualization of "nice", "awful" etc is due to the activity of one or more neuronal networks in our brain. But any single neuron within the n...

Apparently we can choose not to follow a gradient.

RBCs can sense their environment and respond accordingly, DNA does not play much role in it. WBCs have to follow the gradient, it cannot choose whethe...

Let's say you go on to donate blood. Your blood is then packed with appropriate preservatives and stored until needed or till the cells degenerate. Th...

Consider an experiment conducted by a researcher on two subjects A and B. A and B do not communicate with each other during the experiment. In the exp...