Last note to list on mind stuff (I promise)

From: Eric Hawthorne <egh.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2002 15:44:19 -0800

>
>
>Also you plunge into the 'computer' idea, a machine that "thinks" using
>memory.
>Again, in classical reductionism, as a "Ding an Sich" a white elephant on
>its own.
>
The reason that I try to describe thinking that way (in isolation
from its incarnation) is so that we can characterize the
"thinking pattern" in general,
to be able to:

1) recognize what is an essential characteristic of
"a thinking pattern" and what is not (i.e. what is the
essential characteristic of the emergent pattern known as
thinking, versus what are accidental characteristics which
could be different in different incarnations of thinking
processes.)

2) to recognize a "thinking pattern" when it occurs outside of
our one presently known incarnation of it in animal and
human-animal minds,

and perhaps also, to be able to

3) engineer an incarnation of it in some other kind
of machine. e.g. Some highly parallel computer of the relatively
near future, perhaps. (If for no other reason than to convince
ourselves that we have truly understood the essence of
"the thinking pattern".)

Eric
Received on Sun Dec 29 2002 - 18:42:13 PST