Daemon

Ah you mean Dennett's essay. Some time ago, but I'll look again.

No but I will if you point me at it.

I did really want you to explain (again) about what Dennett was doing though Frank.

I feel bad Frank. I've not been here long. I'm still trying to place people on the deranged/perspicacious continuum, and I haven't taken in everything...

THE END

I don't think you have Huxley's reducing valve quite right. He thinks that a conscious brain includes a reducing valve to prevent us thinking about ev...

Harry I don't have a problem defining consciousness and suchlike. Like many words they are defined ostensively. Wikipedia: An ostensive definition con...

Is the piano not perceiving certain inputs from the keyboard? Does it not perceive the meaning of your keystrokes and make the correct sounds for you ...

Hi Antony, I've given it my best shot and got nowhere really. I respect your wish to have a particular kind of discussion, so I'm going to express my ...

Mice were shown a screen with a faint grey line appearing and moving across it, they pressed a lever to receive a reward when they saw the grey line. ...

Not just that, pain determines language use. Pain is one of the things that show what words like "good" and "bad" mean.

Scientists find woman who sees 99 million more colours than others Newcastle University neuroscientist Dr. Gabriele Jordan, recently announced that sh...

'The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.' Robert Louis Stevenson. Pain is a thing, an aspirin is a th...

If it isn't a thing, what is it?

Reincarnation and eternal life are just wishful thinking, and the religions that exploit such beliefs are con tricks.

I've read it all twice and thought about it. You may be right that the sentence needs to be read in context, but I don't understand the context.

Ever been knocked out or had a general anaesthetic? Our conscious experiences are due to our brains. If they are aren't working, no conscious experien...

I don't know if this will help you all, but it is fascinating. One point that particularly interested me: the researchers said that they believed the ...

Do you think a piano feels something when you press the keys?

Francis Xavier, the founder of the Jesuit order, said "Give me a child until the age of seven and I will give you the man". It became a sort of motto ...

I'm willing to try to understand your point. Is the above your point?

Thanks very much for this Harry. No, the computer is not perceiving inputs in the way you and I perceive things. Press a finger against the back of yo...

I'll be in my room.

Indirect speech acts (Wikipedia!) In the course of performing speech acts we communicate with each other. The content of communication may be identica...

Could you all go and talk somewhere else please?

The councilors refused to allow the protestors to hold their demonstration because they advocated violence. The councilors refused to allow the protes...

That was both cool and super, I learned something, thank you!

Morse code was devised by one conscious individual, for use by other conscious individuals. The genetic code developed due to unconscious forces. The ...

Are you being disingenuous Olivier? Do you understand the relevant difference between Morse code and the genetic code, or would you like me to explain...

Do you think Morse code emerged naturally? Can you see the difference between the way Morse code emerged and the way the genetic code emerged?

In your initial post you said: So in order to come up with a definition which is not flawed, one would need to know already whether a virus is alive o...

How do you think it developed Olivier, really?

It doesn't have any understanding. It doesn't perceive the intended meaning, it doesn't perceive anything. It isn't equipped to perceive anything. Sem...

How do you think it developed Olivier, really? How do you think the bacterium's ability to swim up a chemical gradient developed, really?

I do hope you'll consider what I said about definitions before you waste any more time and effort. If you're trying to correctly define "action", you ...

Well I'm afraid you haven't quite understood the description of what the bacterium is doing. The (to me) astonishing truth is that the bacterium does ...

Hi Sir Philo, There's a serious problem with seeking a correct definition like this. In order to know if you have found the correct definition, you ne...

Frankish, who we've been talking about in another thread, says that we don't have qualia, but we do have experiences. So he thinks there's a distincti...

This is the introduction to Searle's 2004 book Mind, A Brief Introduction. INTROD U C T I O N Why I Wrote This Book There are many recent introductory...

Bacteria swim towards chemical attractants. They need to move towards the higher concentration of an attractant, which means keeping track over time w...

I was responding to Olivier's use of the word "symbol". Let's try to focus on that for now.

Can you explain where and what these symbols are? Olivier says that colours are symbols. How do colours point at certain parts of the experience?

I don't need the translation tool Harry, I can do the translation on my own, the tool just saves me typing. When I come across a word that isn't in my...

I wonder if you could explain in broad terms how this works? Where colour is concerned, my understanding is that light of a certain wavelength reaches...

One of my translation agency customers told me he is now receiving texts translated by DeepL from his customers, with a request for the language to be...

Just a misunderstanding then. Searle says the brain doesn't do information processing: https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Is%20the%20Br...

Neurons, synapses, that kind of thing.

I don't think I was confused. The physics of analogue computers and digital computers is not related to the physics of consciousness.

Is that right? I thought a neural network was just a program running on a digital computer. And no analog computer has any connection with the physics...

Do you have a special interest in tools for machine translation Olivier?