I don’t have the exact quote at hand, but there’s a section in LeGuin’s The Lathe of Heaven that paraphrases something like this: “People say dreams aren’t real, but when you’ve seen as many EEG patterns as I have, you recognize that dreams are real events that have real effects. There’s nothing unreal about them.”
Psychology had no answer to Skinner’s criticisms until 1) behavioral studies were able to show that the time it took for people to answer a question about object identity and rotation was related to the degree of rotation (in a famous experiment Eliezer has previously referenced), establishing that observation of behavior was capable of illuminating interior process, and 2) more-advanced technologies were capable of permitting the observation of interior events not previously accessible.
The notion that calling the brain a computer and talking about algorithms naturalizes dualism (i.e., the algorithms are the mind and the brain is the implementation), on the other hand, is pure mysticism.
No; I rather think that you don’t fully understand the implications of the propositions you’re discussing. The brain is a computer in the most literal sense of the word, and asserting this fact is neither controversial nor exceptional.
I don’t have the exact quote at hand, but there’s a section in LeGuin’s The Lathe of Heaven that paraphrases something like this: “People say dreams aren’t real, but when you’ve seen as many EEG patterns as I have, you recognize that dreams are real events that have real effects. There’s nothing unreal about them.”
Psychology had no answer to Skinner’s criticisms until 1) behavioral studies were able to show that the time it took for people to answer a question about object identity and rotation was related to the degree of rotation (in a famous experiment Eliezer has previously referenced), establishing that observation of behavior was capable of illuminating interior process, and 2) more-advanced technologies were capable of permitting the observation of interior events not previously accessible.
No; I rather think that you don’t fully understand the implications of the propositions you’re discussing. The brain is a computer in the most literal sense of the word, and asserting this fact is neither controversial nor exceptional.