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Re:Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009) by RivieraKid on Thursday March 27, 2014 @08:42AM (#7479957)
I have a totally opposite view, I think it's almost certain that there's something very special about mind / consciousness.

For example, notice that the content of your conciouness is the only thing that's certain. Law of physics can change. Or you might wake up from matrix (recursively multiple times). Basically anything can happen. But the fact that you feel good (or bad) at this moment is certain. Mind is something like a window to the physical world.

Also, consciousness is subjective, physics cannot describe it, not even in theory.

Re:Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009) by Smaug123 on Thursday March 27, 2014 @08:54AM (#7480012)
"notice that the content of your conciouness is the only thing that's certain".

Tell that to someone with multiple personalities. Tell that to someone who has brain injuries reducing them to a vegetable. Trauma applied to the brain directly and (to an extent) predictably causes changes to the consciousness, making its contents anything but certain.

Re:Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009) by RivieraKid on Thursday March 27, 2014 @09:03AM (#7480062)
I think you've misunderstood what I meant. For example, when I see a lion, I can be certain about it. It may be a hallucination and suddenly disappear but that doesn't change anything, I really saw the lion.
Re:Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009) by ThomPete on Thursday March 27, 2014 @09:38AM (#7480265)
No you saw something that you interpret as a lion. Thats a very different thing.
Re:Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009) by RivieraKid on Thursday March 27, 2014 @10:16AM (#7480497)
I was refering to the experience of seeing, to the state of my mind. In other words, when I feel pain, I know with absolute certainity that I currently have this unpleasant feeling that I call pain.
Re:Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009) by ThomPete on Thursday March 27, 2014 @10:21AM (#7480530)
Which does not mean that what you experience is pain.
Re:Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009) by RivieraKid on Thursday March 27, 2014 @03:08PM (#7482634)
Why?
Re:Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009) by maxerickson on Thursday March 27, 2014 @08:49AM (#7479987)
Your last statement is only true until it isn't.

(Imagine a device that projects some unknown field at you and can predictably manipulate your subjective experience; it must have a sufficiently complete model of your consciousness and it is difficult to say much more than it is unlikely to be possible)

Re:Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009) by kybernetikos on Thursday March 27, 2014 @04:25PM (#7483198)
It sounds like you're a philosophical idealist. Have you read Berkeley? He argues that it's insane to believe in a 'material' world, since we can never experience that nor have evidence of it. What we experience are ideas.