Nov 14 2011: + saying that THE brain is a machine, if it implies that your whole body is one, then it also implies that the potential master of any human slave is also a machine, so I don't understand that fear of yours.
Anyhow, in my opinion, the brain isN'T a machine, since "machine" comes from mechanical... And the brain is more of an electrical circuit controlling our (bio)mechanical bodies, and since machine also implies engineered, as in man-made... And the human brain is far far away from being man-made for now... ;) The brain is no machine!! ^^ Or at least no more than any computer... which are indeed man-made, but don't have a lot of mechanics involved (hard disks or CD readers apart...)
Last, I agree with TT Chung, the discussion isn't on ethics, philosophy or any moral judgment of any kind, its simply on the idea that the brain might be a consequence of the evolutionary development of our (bio)mechanical bodies.
Nov 8 2011: Or does it? Or is it simply having to account for the stochasticity of the environment and an ever-increasing action-ability...
In my opinion, "self-consciousness" is overly and wrongly emphasized, because it isn't something we can test, nor really prove (I think so I am... the simplest demonstration of them all!!! XD) and it isn't even necessarily due to the brain as an emerging evolutionary organ (that is the topic mainly discussed in the presentation) because I don't think all the species having a brain are all self-conscious... or are they ?? We simply can't prove it for now... But I certainly don't think the only fact they possess a brain makes them inevitably self-conscious... (until proven wrong... ;) )
Nov 8 2011: Isn't language simply a new (relatively to species' evolution's timescale) communication tool.
Whose complexity might've been allowed by the increasing abstraction ability of our ancestors learning to extend their bodies with more and more complex tools, which led to more and more complex motion possibilities which led to more and more possibilities to express things, and thus towards more possible abstraction.
And who allowed in return an explosive increase of this latter by providing even more ways to express things.
Nov 8 2011: I don't know if that first question we'll ever be answerable, but for the second one, isn't anthropology a science to start with ?... ;)
So in this sense, I tend to think that any different point of view or methodology (the distinction in fields of study/sciences being in my opinion a contemporary artifact!!) is always enriching for any subject because it always provides complementary information on it.
So I'd have to strongly disagree with the distinction you seem to emphasize and moreover the hierarchy you seek...
Nov 8 2011: "How do you describe the dividing line?"
By our stronger ability not just to use our own body.
We are the best, species at extending our bodies and our world/environment with tools then with machines, which provide other sorts of movement which didn't necessarily exist before in nature (that is, in the non-man-made environment).
And as an extension of the above, we're the only species having the ability to predict movement for more than one body, like that main task of any choreographer... with goals as diverse as "the search of grace", "the communication of particular emotions"(not necessarily just fear or attraction), etc.
I don't think any school or swarm of any other species can have its movement directed AND predicted (as in directed with a goal of the movement of the group representing something...) intentionally by any one and one only of it's members. (I might be proven wrong, but until then I believe we're the only specie capable of INTENTIONALLY using other bodies/mechanisms than our own.)
Nov 7 2011: As commented on Daniel Wolpert's presentation page :
I personally don't think our particularity as a species is more complex usability of just our bodies.
Simply because I don't think we humans have the most complex sensory-musculo-skeletal system to start with.
What in my opinion makes our "brain bigger" is the fact that we've evolved to greater abstraction, giving more sense to movement than just binary "aggression" or "attraction" a lot of other species only perceive.
And this abstraction also allows us to make sense of/create/define other movements that wouldn't mean a thing if we only were able to interpret 'biological motion".
Nov 7 2011: I'd add that the human brain might be the biggest because we're not only able to predict movement of our own/other individual's bodies, but also have been able to create objects whose movement possibilities can be added to our bodies/worlds in order to provide more and more complexity...
Try invisibly gluing an object that's expected to be light on a table and ask volunteers to weigh the object... I predict they'll be pretty surprised... We can thus predict a lot more from movement possibilities than the only capabilities of our bodies. We indeed perceive/predict our whole world (humanly created or discovered) as a function of it's individual pieces' movability... The human mind (and brain ?) expends way beyond our body, into all objects we know or even simply understand the movement constraints.
For what seems like "there's more to it" than just plain movement (for example how we calculate, compute...) an interesting thing to remember is what the first actual calculators, the abacus, did... how they moved !! XD (Other interesting fact is that this tool seems to have different simultaneous origins... As if movement rules of organized assemblies of small rocks made a universal sense before the discovery of electronics... ^^)
And for the unanswerable questions : who emerged first, movement or sense ?
Or more interestingly, shouldn't we consider both as a same emergent factor, nerves ? (as the presentation tends to demonstrate... and also the acquired blindness of kittens deprived from their motor-ability for cognitive psychology experiments of the past century... among others...)
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A reply on Talk: Daniel Wolpert: The real reason for brains
Anyhow, in my opinion, the brain isN'T a machine, since "machine" comes from mechanical... And the brain is more of an electrical circuit controlling our (bio)mechanical bodies, and since machine also implies engineered, as in man-made... And the human brain is far far away from being man-made for now... ;) The brain is no machine!! ^^ Or at least no more than any computer... which are indeed man-made, but don't have a lot of mechanics involved (hard disks or CD readers apart...)
Last, I agree with TT Chung, the discussion isn't on ethics, philosophy or any moral judgment of any kind, its simply on the idea that the brain might be a consequence of the evolutionary development of our (bio)mechanical bodies.
A reply on Talk: Daniel Wolpert: The real reason for brains
In my opinion, "self-consciousness" is overly and wrongly emphasized, because it isn't something we can test, nor really prove (I think so I am... the simplest demonstration of them all!!! XD) and it isn't even necessarily due to the brain as an emerging evolutionary organ (that is the topic mainly discussed in the presentation) because I don't think all the species having a brain are all self-conscious... or are they ?? We simply can't prove it for now... But I certainly don't think the only fact they possess a brain makes them inevitably self-conscious... (until proven wrong... ;) )
A comment on Conversation: What role does language play in Daniel's explanation of a muscle-centric brain?
Whose complexity might've been allowed by the increasing abstraction ability of our ancestors learning to extend their bodies with more and more complex tools, which led to more and more complex motion possibilities which led to more and more possibilities to express things, and thus towards more possible abstraction.
And who allowed in return an explosive increase of this latter by providing even more ways to express things.
A reply on Conversation: Sport and dance are better measures of evolutionary development than intellectual pursuits
So in this sense, I tend to think that any different point of view or methodology (the distinction in fields of study/sciences being in my opinion a contemporary artifact!!) is always enriching for any subject because it always provides complementary information on it.
So I'd have to strongly disagree with the distinction you seem to emphasize and moreover the hierarchy you seek...
A reply on Conversation: Sport and dance are better measures of evolutionary development than intellectual pursuits
By our stronger ability not just to use our own body.
We are the best, species at extending our bodies and our world/environment with tools then with machines, which provide other sorts of movement which didn't necessarily exist before in nature (that is, in the non-man-made environment).
And as an extension of the above, we're the only species having the ability to predict movement for more than one body, like that main task of any choreographer... with goals as diverse as "the search of grace", "the communication of particular emotions"(not necessarily just fear or attraction), etc.
I don't think any school or swarm of any other species can have its movement directed AND predicted (as in directed with a goal of the movement of the group representing something...) intentionally by any one and one only of it's members. (I might be proven wrong, but until then I believe we're the only specie capable of INTENTIONALLY using other bodies/mechanisms than our own.)
A comment on Conversation: Sport and dance are better measures of evolutionary development than intellectual pursuits
I personally don't think our particularity as a species is more complex usability of just our bodies.
Simply because I don't think we humans have the most complex sensory-musculo-skeletal system to start with.
What in my opinion makes our "brain bigger" is the fact that we've evolved to greater abstraction, giving more sense to movement than just binary "aggression" or "attraction" a lot of other species only perceive.
And this abstraction also allows us to make sense of/create/define other movements that wouldn't mean a thing if we only were able to interpret 'biological motion".
A comment on Talk: Daniel Wolpert: The real reason for brains
Try invisibly gluing an object that's expected to be light on a table and ask volunteers to weigh the object... I predict they'll be pretty surprised... We can thus predict a lot more from movement possibilities than the only capabilities of our bodies. We indeed perceive/predict our whole world (humanly created or discovered) as a function of it's individual pieces' movability... The human mind (and brain ?) expends way beyond our body, into all objects we know or even simply understand the movement constraints.
For what seems like "there's more to it" than just plain movement (for example how we calculate, compute...) an interesting thing to remember is what the first actual calculators, the abacus, did... how they moved !! XD (Other interesting fact is that this tool seems to have different simultaneous origins... As if movement rules of organized assemblies of small rocks made a universal sense before the discovery of electronics... ^^)
And for the unanswerable questions : who emerged first, movement or sense ?
Or more interestingly, shouldn't we consider both as a same emergent factor, nerves ? (as the presentation tends to demonstrate... and also the acquired blindness of kittens deprived from their motor-ability for cognitive psychology experiments of the past century... among others...)