Re: computationalism and supervenience

From: Russell Standish <r.standish.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 03:35:07 +1000

On Sat, Aug 26, 2006 at 08:28:06PM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
> In nature there's no reason to depend on amplifying quantum randomness - there's
> plenty of "random" environmental input to keep our brains from getting stuck in loops.
>

Prevention of loops is not the only use of randomness. Also mentioned
have been creativity and lack of predictability, particularly for
social species (Machiavellian intelligence).

Perhaps there is insufficient randomness coming in through our senses
for these latter tasks, and so brains need to exploit amplification of
synaptic randomness.

What would be interesting is to see the results of similar studies to
Freemans on human brains replicated for simpler creatures such as
ants. Ants do not need to be creative, nor need Machiavellian
intelligence (due to their interesting haploid breeding structure).

Are ant's brains similarly tuned for chaos, or are they far more
deterministic in operation?

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Received on Sat Aug 26 2006 - 23:56:47 PDT