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Question on Naturalism


Randolpin

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If we consider that we were only the result of naturalistic random processes of the interaction of inanimate particles, how come inanimate particles create intelligent minds like humans, even humans themselves have difficulty in creating robots or creating living organisms, how much more inanimate particles interacting with each other in a random manner?

 

Or in further view, how can disorganization produce organization?

 

 

Feedbacks are very much appreciated.. Thank you :)

Edited by Randolpin
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If we consider that we were only the result of naturalistic random processes of the interaction of inanimate particles,

 

 

The interactions and processes are not random. At one level they are driven by the rules of chemistry. At another level, organisms will control the reactions that take place. That allows organisms to grow and reproduce, and therefore evolve.

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I would seriously suggest doing some research into the results that modern artificial neural networks are getting right now. They're loosely modeled on the networks of neurons in the brain, and can be taught to perform tasks that were thought to be difficult or impossible for machines to do on a human level. They're what power a lot of modern image and voice recognition software, content recommendations, are behind a major recent upgrade to the machine translation ability of Google translate and in splashier news, one was taught to play Go to a level that allowed it to beat the top human players in the world.

 

Such neural networks derive a great deal of their flexibility and power from the number of connections in the network, and the best neural networks we have today are achieving these results with many orders of magnitude fewer connections than are present in the human brain. If and when we solve the requisite engineering challenges to build a network with a comparable size to the one presently found in humans, I'd expect to see some remarkable stuff in terms of general AI.

 

Intelligence is a complex trait whose features we have only been able to study directly in any serious way in the last couple of decades. Without being able to study the structure of the brain on a cellular level while it is intact, or get a reading on the responses to specific stimuli or outputs in real time, there was very little anyone could do in terms of real work to understand what was going on with our own minds on a physical level. And the technology to mimic those effects to a similar enough degree to achieve anywhere near comparable results is even more recent than that.

 

You are, in effect, asking why humans are having so much trouble building airplanes even though birds have been able to fly for years, when no one had seen a live bird in motion until thirty years ago, and the wheel was only just invented in the last decade.

 

Given the circumstances, we're developing the technology in that department remarkably quickly.

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I would seriously suggest doing some research into the results that modern artificial neural networks are getting right now. They're loosely modeled on the networks of neurons in the brain, and can be taught to perform tasks that were thought to be difficult or impossible for machines to do on a human level.

 

* very loosely. Attempts to obtain AI by closely emulating brain behavior have been less successful than developing theory, independently, for NNs.

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Nature also had many millions of years for these stochastic processes to take place, with lots of raw material. As opposed to a few humans who have been trying to recreate this for a blink of an eye.

 

What I mean is that-Provided that humans are intelligent beings so even themselves can't create simple living organisms how much more mindless or "by chance" processes of the interaction of particles.

What's a naturalistic random process?

 

Perhaps it is an example of this

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/102080-language-use-by-specialists-is-it-normally-complicated/

 

Purely naturalistic without the intervention of intelligence.The result is chaotic or random processes because there is no intelligence that guides the processes.

 

 

The interactions and processes are not random. At one level they are driven by the rules of chemistry. At another level, organisms will control the reactions that take place. That allows organisms to grow and reproduce, and therefore evolve.

 

Are the rules of chemistry not the result of random processes?

Edited by Randolpin
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What I mean is that-Provided that humans are intelligent beings so even themselves can't create simple living organisms how much more mindless or "by chance" processes of the interaction of particles.

I understand what you mean. My answer is unchanged.

 

Purely naturalistic without the intervention of intelligence.The result is chaotic or random processes because there is no intelligence that guides the processes.

 

 

Are the rules of chemistry not the result of random processes?

You probably mean stochastic processes. They are not random. The outcome of the roll of a die are randomly distributed. The outcomes of chemistry are not.

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Are the rules of chemistry not the result of random processes?

 

 

They are, as swansont says, stochastic. But they are also controlled or even defined by the environment (which chemicals a represent, temperature, pressure, pH, catalysts, etc.)

 

Within a living organism, the environment and the intake of chemicals (food, respiration, etc) is controlled to maintain the set of reactions that constitute life.

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I understand what you mean. My answer is unchanged.

 

 

You probably mean stochastic processes. They are not random. The outcome of the roll of a die are randomly distributed. The outcomes of chemistry are not.

 

So it means that it is well-established, but what triggers me most is how can a mindless particle create such a well-established rule??

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So it means that it is well-established, but what triggers me most is how can a mindless particle create such a well-established rule??

 

 

Particles don't establish the rules, they follow them.

 

The issue is probably how complex behavior arises from the rules, and that (at some level) has to do with the rules being nonlinear in some way.

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