The Mind problem

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Belief, or the problem with the mind

I think, so therefore i exist?

One time i had a discussion whith a friend about his dog. He had the opinion that the dog did not THINK, and i had the opinion that it DOES think. I thought about this question a long time. Then my friend gave me a book, titled 'animal awareness' (ISBN 87470-035-3, The Question of animal awareness), about the intelligence of animals. The author, a professor, had made a list of 16 aspects of the human thinking, in the hope that the animals wouldnt have one of the aspects. They turned out to have all.

But there was something in the book that especially struck me: For the discussion, there was assumed that the process of thinking in animals is a stimulus-responce type of action (including thinking of stimuli-responces in the future, based on previous stimuli). So when you reflect this on humans, OUR thinking is also not more than a stimulus-responce! Think of it, every thought you have is a responce on the previous thought. Nothing is *real* intelligence, and the product of our mind is a responce of all the stimuli we had in the past. Nothing more than that! Is that an insult to humanity, or what? If we really think that way, we are no more than a bunch of fat and bones, the response of a chemical stimulus in the past. And we are nothing more than a dead object, because the fact that the object exists, is a responce from the action what made the object.

You can also put it in a different way: Is your Ego, Spirit, Soul, or whatever name you give it, an entitiy on his own to interact with the body, or a result of all the chemical and muscle reactions inside your body, and we only THINK this Ego is an entity?

Personally i made the choice to refuse to think that way. I truly believe that we are more than bones and fat, destined(?) to die and produce food for others. But it automatically means that i had to accept that there is more than meets the eye in life, although i cannot prove there is. So to believe is a choice, but one who gives me a reason to be on this planet other than just walking here as a bunch of stimulus-responces.

But this also goes two ways: If I am not the product of stimuli, why should others? About animals we can be clear, they are also not a product of just stimuli. But what about dead objects, like a table, or what about the living earth? When i say that I am not a product of stimuli, what gives me the right to say that other objects are? Is the earth really living? Is my robot-pet, which stimulates me to response with compassion, really living?

With these feelings, like Compassion, Regret and Love the discussion gets more complicated, but the essence of it remains the same. Scientists, who are looking for the cause of those feelings, would also say that feelings are a response on (hidden) stimuli. Something like Love would be a chemical reaction in our brains. So the discussion still remains the same: Do you believe there is more in life than chemical reactions?

So, what is that 'thing' what makes us more than the product of stimuli? Are we making it ourselves, or do we recieve it from outside our bodies? Do i need another bottle of whiskey?

Bless all forms of intelligence - From the AniMatrix movie 'the second renaissance', just after machines took over the world because they became more intelligent than humans.

When this universe developed, there must have been a reason behind it. If this was not the case, why would the universe exist anyway? Everything in nature is trying to go to a energy-free state, like a stone is falling cause it wants to have lesser kinetic energy in itself. So why would nature create an expanding universe and therefore cause itself to spend energy in the first place?

There is the possibility that nature is not trying to go to a state with the least energy, but to a state with the highest intelligence. Intelligence is being defined here as the ability to adapt in order to survive a changing environment, or, in other words, evolution.

So what would nature care if the highest form of intelligence in its universe is carbon-based or iron-based? I think human intelligence will never pass a certain level, because humans still think in terms of animal evolution -we seek the strongest partner so the child will survive in a (concrete) jungle-. Partners generally are not chosen because of their IQ.
So if this evolution is taken over by machines (machines developing and making other machines), the level of intelligence in this species will grow faster than that of humans, for the simple reason that machines don't know love and compassion and only breed their own species in terms of intelligence -stronger bodyparts can easily be added so there is no need to breed on that-

The final thought on this is that nature maybe is not looking for a state with the highest inteligence. When intelligence can also be seen as a form of energy, one has to wander which form of energy is the most desirable one. Is that intelligence or love or compassion or... ?

When you think that way and understand that nature is looking for a state with the highest frequency, not only the lowest as we always assumed (like the falling stone, finally f=0), or both, or all, and we can understand that something like the feeling of love could be the highest frequency in this universe, then nature seeks a state of love.

So if this statement is true, and developing towards all frequencies instead of one frequency is the meaning of all this trouble of Mother Nature to create a universe in the first place, it means that all forms and shapes of being in this universe seek this highest frequency. So also a thinking machine must get to the conclusion that life is a mix of all the frequencies, and therefore also develop love, compassion etc.

Most amazing conclusion of this: Even a stone wants to feel love :-))