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loup-vaillant comments on S.E.A.R.L.E's COBOL room - Less Wrong Discussion

29 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 01 February 2013 08:29PM

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Comment author: loup-vaillant 04 February 2013 02:21:39AM 0 points [-]

If I don't understand COBOL, and the inert neurones certainly don't, how can the conjunction of the two understand COBOL?

This one appears to assume reductionism is false: the same reasoning can apply to properly organized heap of neurons. Indeed an intuition pump, for we are dualists by default.

(Come to think of it, doesn't non-reductionism come from treating our ignorance as positive knowledge? In that case, the mind seems irreducible only because we just don't know how to reduce it yet.)