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But, it's different with humans
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I disagree.
Human beings are smarter than animals. But a huge amount of it is a matter of degree, not kind.
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When a human reaches full adulthood, thier braincells cease to grow. From then on, if any die, they'll never grow back.
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False.
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And if we are in fact the braincells of the Universe, then once we reach a point at which it's no longer necessary to reproduce, in a sloppy attempt at randomly generating another being suitable for the enviornment, it will be because we understand so much.
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Even if your previous false statement was true, analogy only stretches so far.
Organic life behaves the way it does for many accidental reasons, not all of which we understand. Analogizing an organism with the universe and a cell of that organism with an organism in the universe is a huge massive stretch.
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Originally Posted by asaris
I'm sorry I was a bit imprecise. What I meant to say was that we are not parts of the universe. This is not the same thing as saying we are not part of the universe. Even if we are not separable from the universe in fact, we are separable in thought. I can think about an individual human being without thinking about anything other than him or her, and I can say true things about that human being without necessarily referencing anything else that's in the universe.
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To a limited and innacurate extent, yes you can.
The same is true of an electron. You can speak about that electron without talking about the rest of the universe. To a certain limited and innacurate extent.
In reality, that electron is interacting with the universe, and the more detail and accuracy you want to talk about that electron the more you have to speak abou the universe to describe it.
Are you proposing some kind of duality -- that people have both a "mind/spirit" and a "body/form" that are seperate?
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But perhaps we mean different things by the word 'universe'? I'm meaning something along the lines of the background to what there is, so that we're not even part of the universe, but 'in' it.
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What evidence is there that you can seperate "the universe" from it's contents? Can you seperate the "pile of pebbles" from the "pebbles" that make up the pile? Can you have a "pile of pebbles" without any "pebbles" in it?
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Perhaps you mean something like 'everything there is'. Even that can be understood in two ways. If you mean the set of all that there is, I'm not sure it even makes sense to ascribe even potential consciousness to something that's a mathematical construct.
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Sets are as much mathematical as they are logical. If I formally defined a machine that was capable of emulating a human brain, would that formal definition be "conscious"? I don't see why not.
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If you mean the contents of the set of all that there is, I'm not sure it makes sense to ascribe any unity to such a diversity of concepts.
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The universe, physically, is pretty damn uniform, as far as we can see. It
could be possible that the universe could become "aware" -- I mean, mankind is a collection of "independant" "cells", which contain multiple chemicals and processes, but together seem to form something that sure looks intelligent.
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And yes, Mantus, we're on a communication network right now. That's not what I meant. Jem's idea requires, not merely mediated communication of consciousness (through speech or text), but unmediated communication of consciousness.
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Human consciousnesses are networked. It is called "speech". Speech and other communication mechanisms are much higher bandwidth than neuron-neuron communication within the brain.
If you build a computer by having 5 year old children follow simple rules, and that computer successfully multiplies two 6 digit numbers, the "computer" formed by the children has properties and abilities that the children themselves lack.
A larger scale version of this could be possible. You can see things sort of like this in large-scale human organizations and markets -- or the like.
Forming an intelligent being whose "cells" are independant, intelligent, human beings isn't something I expect to happen spontaniously. But, as far as I can tell there is nothing fundamental that prevents it.