Computer \"reads\" memories... (Humans)

by dhw, Monday, March 22, 2010, 22:17 (5168 days ago) @ George Jelliss

GEORGE: This is the start of a series of videos anticipating a "War on Neuroscience" which will be the next anti-science campaign
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77XBZHJcoK4
This will include not only creationists but new agers of all stripes and even agnostics like dhw who think there must be more to consciousness than can be explained by materialism.-First of all, agnostics like dhw do not think that there MUST be more to consciousness etc., but that there MAY be more. Secondly, a "War on Neuroscience" will not include agnostics like dhw. It doesn't even include theists like David Turell. The only war I'm liable to wage is against premature conclusions.
 
The speaker says that we have "begun to reveal the mechanisms", and we have identified the "physical correlates in the brain activity", which is presumably enough to convince him that the neural network is the physical source of all our mental activities. No-one on this forum is questioning that specific areas of the brain are related to specific activities. The point at issue is whether physical matter PRODUCES will, consciousness, emotion, memory, imagination etc. An analogy might be the fact that without TV cameras and TV sets you won't get the images, but the TV cameras and sets do not PRODUCE the images. Furthermore, it takes an independent intelligence to operate them. (How do we switch our own different mechanisms on and off?)-At one point, the speaker asks what seems to me the big give-away question, which Matt has also asked: if humans can build an android that produces all the above mental activities of humans, will theists still believe in a soul? I can only answer for myself: no, I won't. Of course, this won't settle the Chance v. Design argument ... I doubt if even the most naïve of atheists would believe such a machine could spontaneously assemble itself ... but for me it would render God a virtual irrelevance. Sadly, we don't have a conventional theist on the forum to discuss this aspect of religion. However, the android hasn't been built yet. Maybe it never will be. I'm not going to base or dismiss beliefs on such a hypothesis. If atheists have faith that the machine can be built, and theists have faith that it can't, good for them. I prefer to wait for the evidence before I make a decision.