Category: Mind
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Why AI Systems Cannot be Conscious
1) To be able to maintain that AI systems are literally conscious in the way we are, conscious states must be multiply realizable. Consider a cognitive state such as knowing that 7 is a prime number. That state is realizable in the wetware of human brains. The question is whether the same type of state…
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Mind-Body Dualism in Aquinas and Descartes: How Do They Differ?
Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, views the soul as the form of the body. Anima forma corporis. Roughly, soul is to body as form is to matter. So to understand the soul-body relation, we must first understand the form-matter relation. Henry Veatch points out that "Matter and form are not beings so much as they are…
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Spread Mind
Reader Matteo sends us here, where we read: So let me tell you why the Spread Mind promises to solve one of the most difficult problems in the history of science and philosophy. First, allow me to be clear about the terminology. First, all my efforts are based on a straightforward empirical hypothesis, the so called Mind-Object Identity hypothesis (MOI),…
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What’s to Stop an AI System from having a Spiritual Soul?
John Doran in a comment presents an argument worth bringing to the top of the pile: A) Anything conscious has a non-material basis for such consciousness. B) Certain AI constructs [systems] are conscious. Therefore: C) Such AI constructs [systems] have a non-material component in which their consciousness resides. Why doesn't that work? It's obviously valid.…
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More on the Unity of Consciousness: From Self to Immortal Soul?
Suppose I see a black cat. The act of visual awareness in a case like this is typically, even if not always, accompanied by a simultaneous secondary awareness of the primary awareness. I am aware of the cat, but I am also aware of being aware of the cat. How does the Humean* account for…
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AI and the Unity of Consciousness
Top AI researchers such as Geoffrey Hinton, the "Godfather of AI," hold that advanced AI systems are conscious. That is far from obvious, and may even be demonstrably false if we consider the phenomenon of the unity of consciousness. I will first explain the phenomenon in question, and then conclude that AI systems cannot accommodate…
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Can an AI System Meditate?
Resolute meditators on occasion experience a deep inner quiet. It is a definite state of consciousness. You will know it if you experience it, but destroy it if you try to analyze it. If you have the good fortune to be vouchsafed such a state of awareness you must humbly accept it and not reflect…
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Intelligence, Cognition, Hallucination, and AI: Notes on Susskind
Herewith, a first batch of notes on Richard Susskind, How to Think About AI: A Guide for the Perplexed (Oxford 2025). I thank the multi-talented Brian Bosse for steering me toward this excellent book. Being a terminological stickler, I thought I'd begin this series of posts with some linguistic and conceptual questions. We need to…
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Philosophy from the Twilight Zone: “The Lonely”
Substack latest. With a tip of the sweat-stained hat to Elliot Crozat and Brian Bosse for stimulating discussion.
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The Universe Groks Itself and the Aporetics of Artificial Intelligence
I will cite a couple of articles for you to ponder. Malcolm Pollack sends us to one in which scientists find their need for meaning satisfied by their cosmological inquiries. Subtitle: “The stars made our minds, and now our minds look back.” The idea is that in the 14 billion years since the Big Bang,…
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More Bad Philosophy of Mind . . .
. . . by a scientist (of course!). Stack topper. Doing real science is hard; writing bad philosophy is easy.
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Ruminations on Advanced AI
Is AI a tool we use for our purposes? I fear that it is the other way around: we are the tools and its are the purposes. There are many deep questions here and we'd damned well better start thinking hard about them. I fear that what truly deserves the appellation 'Great Replacement' is the…
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The ‘Gordian’ Solution to the World-Knot
If the mind-body problem is the world-knot, as Schopenhauer is supposed to have said, then eliminative materialism is the 'Gordian' solution.
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Soul as Homunculus? On Homuncular Explanation
The following quotation is reproduced verbatim from Michael Gilleland's classics blog, Laudator Temporis Acti: Augustine, Sermons 241.2 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 1134; tr. Edmund Hill): They could see their bodies, they couldn't see their souls. But they could only see the body from the soul. I mean, they saw with their eyes, but inside there was…
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Does Matter Think?
I think not. Substack latest.