?
RESPONDENT: Is there a difference between sensation in a brain – of whichever size – and sensation in a machine?
RICHARD: I see that you are using the word ‘sensation’ rather loosely there … the main difference between what occurs in regards an organismic sensorium and a mechanical sensor – ‘a device which detects or measures some condition or property and records, indicates, or otherwise responds to the information received’ (Oxford Dictionary) – being stimulated is that of agency, which of necessity involves self-reference, and to be self-referential is to be self-interested.
As briefly as possible: a self-referential/ self-interested organism is concerned about its existence, and by extension others’ existence, in that it is biased (it finds water appealing and acid unappealing for example) – and being biased is what being concerned means – whereas machines are indifferent, as it were, to both their existence and their functions (switched off or on makes no difference to a machine).
Furthermore, machines are built by humans to serve human agency (rather than to be an agency even if that be possible) and the first principle of serving an agency is being non-resistant (obedient to the agency) and thus not self-concerned.
Mailing List 'AF' Respondent No. 103
RESPONDENT: Maybe the non-factually-based conclusion which was arrived at in your example is an example of creating an example to prove one’s bias as well?
RICHARD: I unabashedly acknowledge my bias towards facts and actuality … I am so hooked on facts and actuality that I can no longer see the truth.
Mailing List 'B' Respondent No. 25
RESPONDENT: In what way is consciousness related to intelligence?
RICHARD: If you are indeed referring to self-consciousness, or self-awareness, it is an essential prerequisite for intelligence to arise: intelligence is not only the faculty of the human brain thinking, with all its understanding (intellect) and comprehension (sagacity), but includes its cognisance (awareness or consciousness) of being a body existing in the world of people, other animals, plants, things and events.
Moreover, intelligence requires self-reference – which involves the issue of agency (intervening action towards an end; action personified; a source of action towards an end) and agency can be only self-referential – plus intelligence also requires self-interest: a self-referential organism is concerned about its existence, and by extension others’ existence, in that it is biased – it finds water appealing and acid unappealing for example – and being biased is what being self-interested means.
Mailing List 'AF' Respondent No. 25
RESPONDENT: That is probably enough for now, I think. Don’t you agree, you have some things in common with the man [Ludwig Wittgenstein]?
RICHARD: Hmm … somewhat. I am biased, I guess, because he failed to enable peace-on-earth.
General Correspondence Number Six
RESPONDENT: Live and enjoy your life, everything else is nonsense.
RICHARD: I would not call the pristine purity, of the peerless perfection the infinitude this material universe actually is, ‘nonsense’ … but, then again, I am biased in this regard. Irredeemably biased, in fact.
Mailing List 'AF' Respondent No. 44
Q: You can’t leave it alone any more … or rather: it doesn’t leave you alone.
R: Yes, that is when that momentum is rolling. You are not setting the pace any more. An eagerness grips you … I happen to think it a delightful eagerness, but of course I am biased! Eagerness, correctly directed, is magnificent.
The Highly Esteemed Compassion Perpetuates Sorrow