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syzygy comments on Angry Atoms - Less Wrong
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I don't really get this. Why can't you simply view an animal or person as a physical system? I don't think you need any concept of information processing. If you think of animals and people as akin to mechanical machines, and many people thought of at least animals as machines before the advent of information processing, then you actually have an accurate grasp of what's happening. The animal is turning physical force into chemical and electrical forces and then back into physical force; this is not substantially different from a mechanical machine. If the primitive atomist world view can encompass chemistry (which it did; different elements were taken to be differently shaped atoms) then I think it can encompass behavior.
Behavior is very different than thoughts. It's easier to think of animals as machines because we have never experienced an animal thought. To us, animals just look exactly as you described, like behavior outputting machines, because we have never experienced the thought processes of animals.