From: Mikko Särelä (msarela@cc.hut.fi)
Date: Sun Jan 15 2006 - 15:33:45 MST
On Sun, 15 Jan 2006, Phillip Huggan wrote:
> Mikko Särelä <msarela@cc.hut.fi> wrote:
>
> > And why do you claim that the chemical component is not computational?
> > Is it not a kind of way of doing mass communication within a brain and
> > the rest of the body?
>
> If you want to define computation as any physical process, I'm not going
> to argue semantics. You win. The class of computation utilizing
> semiconductor technology and as far as I can tell next-generation
> molecular computers; this is what AGI programmers are planning to use.
> This class of computation is presently capable of coding a hormone
> molecule as you describe. The coded molecules do not behave as do the
> real things. There is chemical physics involved. Even if you can
> reproduce all the behaviours of the molecule, you still will probably
> need the actual atoms to play Frankenstein.
You seem to be either misunderstanding me, or claiming that our
consciousness is not the result of our brains computational processes.
My claim regarding hormones and their connection to emotions is that
hormones are a way in which a certain group of neurons sends messages to
other cells in the human body. To be more precise, my claim was that
hormones as such are not emotions, but that they are a media of mass
communication between neurons and other cells.
If this is the case, we do not need to code the molecules exactly to
reproduce emotions (if we want to do that). It is the communication
protocol that matters, not the media in which the information is
transferred. Hormones just happen to be the currently used way of
conveying same message to almost every cell in our body at the same time.
In other words, they are a broadcast media.
--
Mikko Särelä http://thoughtsfromid.blogspot.com/
"Happiness is not a destination, but a way of travelling." Aristotle
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