Posted on 05/23/2009 3:12:02 PM PDT by betty boop
I daresay you are probably exactly right about that, tentmaker!
Why does it seem "odd" to you, valkyry1? Surely you notice that there is a significant difference between you and, say, your vacuum cleaner. It seems to me (at least) that this difference is worth exploring/explaining.
Spot-on onedoug! But then, Why is it that it's not the "other way around?" This, I think, is the explanation that Rosen was looking for.
bump and book mark for later reading. And yes i’d like that word article too. :)
Machines seem to be an extension of our senses- fine tuned to deliver informantion that would otherwise be impossible for us to see, hear, etc.(x-rays)
There may be other stimuli (or forces) at work in nature that, due to our 'insensitivity', we're incapable of measuring. That we never developed a 'receptor' for it was because it wasn't paramount to our survival.
Fear of the Unknown is the blanket treatment we've developed for just such things. Have you ever wondered why you picked up something to read and found it addressed something you've been acutely interested in? Or changed a channel to something that again, hit the mark? Or maybe you've been in a life threatening situation and came out unscathed and wondered, "How did I survive this?"
There may be nothing at all to these 'observations' but, building machines capable of 'sensing' them would be neat. If, these are true 'forces', and we could discover where to look for them, that is. It'll probably happen by accident if it happens at all.
Surely you notice that there is a significant difference between you and, say, your vacuum cleaner.
Of course I notice. I guess we are all in different places along this journey and asking different questions, and his questions are not mine.
To extend on your electric appliance analogy, I can also see a difference from myself and electro-chemical reactions, a mountain rock slide, or a hurricane.
Why not? (if we are going to ax silly questions)
geezzzzz...for a moment there I thought the headline was speaking about an Orgasmism....OH GOSH TOO MUCH WINE...LOL!!
IMHO, yours is one of the closest to get it right.
The same question is essentially what Adam performed in the Garden of Eden, naming all the animals. The action of naming, was more than simply identifying a verbal expression with an object. Rather, the name is an expression of the essence of the object/subject being named.
When Adam had body, soul, and spirit, and presented with other living beings which had body and soul, but lacking the spirit, which presented humans as having been made in His image, Adam was able to then discern between the animals and God in fellowship with Him.
Sounds like the start of of a new Saturday Night thread with lots of possibilities! LOL!
A strong "proof" that the human body and human spirit are two different things.. as I speculate..
The human body can and does cease to operate often..
The spirit does not..
I have a problem believing in things I can't see. But I'm not alone.
When something hits me in the head- and I didn't see it?- I respect it. Ask anyone over 6 feet tall (come to think of it, my foot is at least a foot long- now that you mention feet) how many times they've been smacked in the head. Ever have a car drive over your foot? Hurts like hell. If a way exists to utilize another 'sense' it should be discovered. Otherwise, we'll look like dummies to those 'in-the-know'.
I liked it. But I'm not sure I would call the Earth an organism. Anyway, the argument is pretty good and it led me to these ....
THE PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS OF THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS
Caratheodory's Principle and the Existence of Global Integrating Factors Abstract. A proof is given of a theorem on the integrability of Pfaffian forms which is used in Caratheodory's approach to thermodynamics. It is pointed out that Caratheodory's original proof of the existence of entropy and of absolute temperature is incomplete, since it fails to take into account the local nature of this theorem. By combining the theorem with the results of BTJCHDAHL and GBEVE on the existence of continuous empirical entropy functions, it is shown that the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics imply the existence of a globally defined differentiable empirical entropy function for every simple thermodynamic system. This result supplies the missing step in Caratheodory's argument and makes a separate proof of the principle of increase of entropy unnecessary.
...
An advantage of this approach is that no separate proof of the principle of increase of entropy is required [3], since the true entropy is a strictly increasing function of the empirical entropy obtained here.
In section 2 we demonstrate the existence of a continuous (global) empirical entropy σ by methods similar to those of BUCHDAHL and GKEVE [6], but without assuming the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The First and Second Laws are introduced in section 3 together with certain supplementary smoothness assumptions, and it is shown that a differentiable local empirical entropy can be defined in the neighbourhood of each point of M. The construction of a differentiable global empirical entropy s is finally accomplished in section 4.
...
Since g is a strictly increasing function it follows that the C°° map s = go a of M onto {(0, oo), <$} is a C°° global empirical entropy on M. Moreover s has no critical points, i. e. ds never vanishes. For s may be expressed on each set V of the open covering i^ of M as a strictly increasing C°° function of the corresponding C°° local empirical entropy sv, and dsyis everywhere non-zero on V. It follows from (E) that ψ = λds, where λ is an everywhere non-vanishing C°° function on M whose reciprocal is thus a global integrating factor for ψ.
Some of the characters in the paper are not rendered correctly above so you must read the paper to see what they are, and I hope I did't screw up anybody's arrow 3 because of the bad rendering.
As an "aside", Rosen hits a few "sore" points, namely, "meaning" and "information" which involve arrows 3, 2, and 4.
Instead of “Rosen”, I should have written “Mikulecky”.
Different believers have different spiritual gifts, but to believers who have been exposed to spiritual warfare and directly exposed to demons, that is an undisciplined worldly reaction to unbelievers.
What most unbelievers fail to understand, is that the love and patience believers exhibit when communicating the issue to an unbeliever, is frequently misunderstood and associated with naivete and foolishness.
Truly organisms are not the sum their parts.
And therefore mathematical models (reductionism) cannot be built to simulate what is observed.
A complex system falls outside the formalism called the Newtonian Paradigm. That is not to say that complex systems cannot be seen as machines for limited kinds of analysis. This is, in fact, what traditional science does. Using Rosen’s general characteristics to separate the two kinds of objects, we see that complex systems contain semantic aspects which cannot be reduced to syntax. Therefore they are not simulatable even though, when viewed as machines, the machine model is simulatable. They have no largest model from which all other models can be derived. This is simply because complex systems, by their very nature, require multiple distinct ways of interacting with them to capture their qualities. Their models are now distinct. Analytic models, which are expressed mathematically as direct products of quotient spaces are no longer equivalent to synthetic models which are built up from disjoint pieces as direct sums. Using this formulation, every synthetic model is an analytic model, but there are analytic models which are not synthetic models. In other words, these analytic models are not reducible to disjoint sets of parts. This is a most profound distinction and requires some elaboration, for in it lies the essence of the failure of reductionism. In the machine, each model analytic or synthetic, is formulated in terms of the material parts of the system. Thus any model will be reducible and can be reconstructed from its parts.
This is not the case in a complex system. There are certain key models which are formulated in an entirely different way. These models are made up of functional components which do not map to the material parts in any one-to-one manner. The functional component itself is totally dependent on the context of the whole system and has no meaning outside that context. This is why reducing the system to its material parts loses information irreversibly. This is a cornerstone to the overall discovery Rosen made. It captures a real difference between complexity and reductionism which no other approach seems to have been able to formulate. This distinction makes it impossible to confuse computer models with complex systems. It also explains how there can be real “objective” aspects of a complex system that are to be considered along with the material parts, but which have a totally different character....
A previous article raised a similar point in retrospect, that the biological cell developed maintenance and repair functions before it could have been aware of - or anticipated - the need for them.
As MHGinTN mentioned earlier, the phenomenon points to a non-linear temporal element. Or as hosepipe mentioned earlier, the existence of spirit independent of flesh.
Bottom line, even at the lowest levels, life itself cannot be reduced to parts which can be mathematically summed and modeled to simulate actual life. The whole is not equal to the sum of the parts.
One can have a vast knowledge base, but this of itself does not lead to creative thinking. Or even to any kind of thinking strictly speaking.
Presumably we can understand "knowledge base" as the contents of memory, or some kind of storage device. In order for thinking to occur, the thinker must select from memory, i.e., "remember" items from past perception and experience that are relevant to what he wants to think about, and must organize these components into concepts. These operations are self-initiated, autonomous, independent of the knowledge base, and inherently goal-directed, or purposeful. The formulated concepts are then capable of further analysis, with further calls on memory to provide additional data as needed. The contents of memory do not organize themselves into concepts or judge or analyze them. Only a thinker can do that.
The problem seems to be that we can build machines, but we can't build thinkers.
It seems to me robots are amazingly sophisticated tools that man can deploy to serve his own goals and purposes. But it also seems that these sophisticated machines have no principle whereby they can originate goals and purposes of their own. Maybe we could say what they lack is free will? (Machines, after all, are determined systems.)
Strange stuff to be thinking about, F15Eagle! Thank you so much for writing!
LOLOL dear brother in Christ! We see what we see! :^)
To some it may appear that "machine" is itself composed of a myriad of living entities....
But certainly I'm in agreement that "The human body can and does cease to operate often. The spirit does not." As Plato might say, the spirit is the eternal "form" of the body. The body depends on it for its own material expression as an existent object. When the spirit "departs," the body is abandoned to the tender mercies of the second law of thermodynamics....
In short, the body perishes; but the soul or spirit does not. And thus Plato said, "Death, if I am right, is in the first place the separation from one another of two things, soul and body; nothing else." [Gorgias 524]
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.