Help me understand the difference between a process and a processor

[scribble]

So maybe this is a Science-forum question, but for some reason I had to ask here.

I have a computer (but I don't use it to access JREF -- I can whistle 300baud and I use that to connect to AOL). On my monitor I can plainly see an operating system running, along with all these programs and processes.

I'm told they all correspond to activity taking place in the wiring of my computer, but as much as I try to examine those wires, I can't see s**t happening. Even if I use some highly scientific tools, all I can get are pulses of electricity or even better, ones and zeros. I still can't grasp how this could possibly be the basis for all the fantastic things I see on my computer screen -- from space aliens with which I can do battle to spreadsheets with which I can do taxes.

Clearly all you programmers who think that this is all due to some bits in my processor are insane. But, you say, if I smash my processor, my computer won't be able to show me all those cool things. Well, maybe you're right -- but that proves nothing.

Mabe those programs are still there and running just fine only I can't see them anymore. Did you ever think of THAT?

Morons.

[DanishDynamite]

:D

[Fade]

This is a brilliant analogy!

I am disappointed I didn't think of it first =(

[c4ts]

All those foolish A-Theists who believe in free willy are proven wrong RIGHT HERE. The computer's programs, its gravitons, were thrown into the Abyss by the LG because it had no reward and punishment system!

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Fade
This is a brilliant analogy!

I am disappointed I didn't think of it first =(

Huh??? What is supposed to be the point here?

[Imaginist]

Here's another analogy for you:

You can destroy the processor and/or the connection, but that doesn't make the Internet cease to exist.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Imaginist
Here's another analogy for you:

You can destroy the processor and/or the connection, but that doesn't make the Internet cease to exist.

Well yes, like you can destroy a television set without destroying the TV signal itself. If it is an attempt by Scribble to say the mind is reducible to the brain, then he really hasn't addressed this at all. Once we know everything about computers we can understand their output. But once we know everything about the brain, we could at most only understand our behaviour given that the world is physically closed. It seems to me that we can never understand the experiences associated with particular brain processes. How can science understand that which is only discernable from the first person perspective? Science by its very nature deals with the publically observable.

[WooBot]

Dear Sir,

Your astonishment's odd;
*I* am always about in the Quad.
And that's why TV
Will continue to be,
Since observed by

Yours faithfully,
God.

[c4ts]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian


Well yes, like you can destroy a television set without destroying the TV signal itself. If it is an attempt by Scribble to say the mind is reducible to the brain, then he really hasn't addressed this at all. Once we know everything about computers we can understand their output. But once we know everything about the brain, we could at most only understand our behaviour given that the world is physically closed. It seems to me that we can never understand the experiences associated with particular brain processes. How can science understand that which is only discernable from the first person perspective? Science by its very nature deals with the publically observable.

So if I unplug my computer's modem and turn on the screensaver, it's still recieving an external signal?

[scribble]

Originally posted by Imaginist
Here's another analogy for you:

You can destroy the processor and/or the connection, but that doesn't make the Internet cease to exist.

In the intrest of being a pedant:

It does make part of the internet cease to exist. Sometimes a vastly significant part. What if the processor you smash is in one of the main backbone routers? Yeah? What if my computer serves content and I smash it's processor?

Is the Internet still the same Internet when you take away a huge part of it? What about a tiny part? What if you removed all PCs but one from the internet, but that one was running a webserver and FTP and NNTP? Is it still an Internet if there is only one node?

Anyow, whatever you smash, you still can't prove to me that my programs aren't still there, executing -- even still talking to the internet. I challenge you.

(That last you is plural. Damn english)

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I'm pretty sure that if I smash my computer, the processes leave it and continue to compute in a coherent manner. If you take a photograph of the room, they sometimes appear as little vortex-shaped blobs of light.

~~ Paul

[chance]

scribble Anyow, whatever you smash, you still can't prove to me that my programs aren't still there, executing -- even still talking to the internet. I challenge you Ok, don’t smash the computer, just disconnect a few circuits and then reconnect them! Sometimes the programs will still be there, other times you my have corrupted the program and it’s dead.

[Imaginist]

Okay folks,

These analogies are interesting and even fun, but surely we all agree that in themselves they prove nothing, which was basically the point of the TV analogy I used in other threads.

By the way, it can and has been argued that all langauge is basically analogy. This should create a problem for anyone that recognizes that when they are thinking or talking about anything they believe is external to them, they must actually be thinking and talking about the representation in their brains of that supposed thing. Even our "immediate" perceptions are distanced in both space and time from that thing. Hence, all our understandings must be at least twice removed from those supposed things out there.

In any case, the problem is that our basic assumptions about the nature of reality continue to determine our interpretations of the analogies, just as they determine how we interpret our experiences and how we open or close our minds to other possibilities.

[c4ts]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
I'm pretty sure that if I smash my computer, the processes leave it and continue to compute in a coherent manner. If you take a photograph of the room, they sometimes appear as little vortex-shaped blobs of light.

~~ Paul

Yeah, those frikkin' orbs are everywhere. I saw two bouncy ones at a strip club the other night, but the bouncer kicked me out when I tried to communicate with them.

[Fade]

These analogies are interesting and even fun, but surely we all agree that in themselves they prove nothing, which was basically the point of the TV analogy I used in other threads.

Unless they're your analogies.. right?


Let me be the first to call you out as a Sock Puppet.

[c4ts]

Originally posted by Fade


Unless they're your analogies.. right?


Let me be the first to call you out as a Sock Puppet.

Actually, he did bring up the TV analogy once in another thread, but it sure looks like he's a sock puppet, since Ian brought it up here.

[Imaginist]

Originally posted by Fade


Unless they're your analogies.. right?


Let me be the first to call you out as a Sock Puppet.


Nope, not even my analogies prove a darn thing... except the weakness of analogies!

Excuse my ignorance, I'm realtively new to these forums, but what the heck is a "sock puppet"?

[The One called Neo]

Originally posted by c4ts


Actually, he did bring up the TV analogy once in another thread, but it sure looks like he's a sock puppet, since Ian brought it up here.

Huh??? It is me that is Ian's sock puppet! :mad:

[Wile E. Coyote]

Originally posted by scribble


... I challenge you.

(That last you is plural. Damn english)

I believe the word you are looking for is "Y'all". It is quite a contagious word, once it catches on.

[BillyTK]

I built a computer out of bamboo canes and water, but I carnt figure out where to put the bloody floppy disk in... :eek:

[hammegk]

Process and processor are both designed to remove (human)subjectiveness. Software & hardware; big deal?

What is the difference between life & not-life. Why do you draw the line there -- wherever you put a line.

[c4ts]

Originally posted by The One called Neo


Huh??? It is me that is Ian's sock puppet! :mad:

I said it looked like he was your sock puppet, I never said he actually was.

[TheERK]

Unfortunately, this post has gone sort of off-topic. I'd like to address the analogy that Scribble made in the beginning.

Originally posted by scribble
I'm told they all correspond to activity taking place in the wiring of my computer, but as much as I try to examine those wires, I can't see s**t happening. Even if I use some highly scientific tools, all I can get are pulses of electricity or even better, ones and zeros. I still can't grasp how this could possibly be the basis for all the fantastic things I see on my computer screen -- from space aliens with which I can do battle to spreadsheets with which I can do taxes.


Although the intent of the analogy, given the context of this forum, is clearly to demonstrate that consciousness is the result of the brain, I think it makes a different point. This would be an excellent analogy to use when somebody claimed that there's no way the brain can perform all of the ridiculously complex processes that it does; for example, imagination, problem solving, abstract mathematical thought, focus of attention, etc.

However, I think I have discovered, in my opinion, why this argument does not eliminate the 'problem of consciousness.' When you speak of computer games where you battle space aliens, no matter how amazing that may be, it is still reducable to fundamental components. Anyone who knows enough about computer architecture knows, more or less, how an input of 1's and 0's can turn into complicated programs. So, you describing a spreadsheet as 'fantastic' is misleading; it may be very complicated, but there is nothing mysterious about it--it can be reduced to patterns of matter.

When people speak of qualia, though, we aren't talking about how the brain puts together a visual picture of a scene and remembers what it looks like. As amazing as it seems at first, it's really just incredibly complicated. No--we're talking about simple things, like 'redness.' Because it would appear that 'redness' can not be reduced to anything more basic, your analogy does not seem to apply to simple qualia. If you are going to demonstrate to dualists that they are wrong, I think a different approach may be necessary.

[Mercutio]

Imaginist:"By the way, it can and has been argued that all langauge is basically analogy. This should create a problem for anyone that recognizes that when they are thinking or talking about anything they believe is external to them, they must actually be thinking and talking about the representation in their brains of that supposed thing. Even our "immediate" perceptions are distanced in both space and time from that thing. Hence, all our understandings must be at least twice removed from those supposed things out there."

:confused: Language as analogy is easy--I have argued that myself here number of times. It has nothing to do with any mental or brain representation, though. There are no internal "meanings" that our words are analogs of; rather, our words are defined by our use--our agreement that a particular external "thing" is "a cat", or "a dance", "red" or "a quark", and our agreement to talk about it in particular ways, defines the word. Thus, not defined internally but by a language-community.

For good commentary that everyone hates to read, try Skinner's "Verbal Behavior". For much cooler writing, Wittgenstein's Brown and Blue Books.

[Imaginist]

Originally posted by Mercutio


For good commentary that everyone hates to read, try Skinner's "Verbal Behavior". For much cooler writing, Wittgenstein's Brown and Blue Books.

Oh, goody! More books!

I've got an underappreciated reading recommendation for you too, and you don't even have to go to the library or buy a book.

Pure Phenomenology, Its Method and Its Field of Investigation

http://www3.baylor.edu/~Scott_Moore/essays/Husserl.html

Isn't this fun! Ciao! :cool: