[FRIAM] Can a robot have a soul?

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Get out your steelman kit, because I absolutely DON’T believe that an epiphenomenon is a thing.  What I do think is that  every thing is both phenomenon and epiphenomenon depending on how we look it, depending on the interpretant we bring to bear.   So that the smoke cloud is llama shape is epiphenomenal with respect to the development of the cloud unless on considers that the shading provided by a llama shaped cloud might effect the development of the fire that makes the smoke.  
I think many important arguments concern whether some consequence is phenomenal or epiphenomoenal. Consider the concept of collateral damage. What's a few children when will killed a thousand  terriorists with the same policy.   Well, five years later when you are withdrawing your troops under a hail of gunfire, you discover that there was nothing collateral about that damage except in the very narrow frame that bounded your thought.  Nick 

Nick Thompson
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2021 1:09 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Can a robot have a soul?

No, I think you fully believe that. Where we disagree is that I think epiphenomena are purely an artifact of the formal language used. That means if your language is not formal, then you have no epiphenomena. All this informal talk you engage in, here, contains nothing like a well-defined thing we could name "epiphenomenon".

Take Frank up on reading the book on Lie groups or the Baez chapter. Or help Jon formalize it. Then, I think, we'll have a way to disentangle phenomena from epiphenomena ... and *then* we can falsify my claim that they don't validate against the real world.

On 9/19/21 8:22 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>  Whether something is epiphenomenal or not is in the eye of the 
> beholder.  Glen thinks I disagree with that, but I don’t.  Where we genuinely disagree, I think, is in the relative value of a life spent looking for frames that encompass other frames.  What might be an entertainment for him is kind of obsession for me.

--
"Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie."
☤>$ uǝlƃ


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