1303%NJIT-EIES@sri-unix.UUCP (07/11/84)
From: "Paul Levinson" <1303@NJIT-EIES> In response to Rich Rosen's attempt to reason away the existence of mind (pyuxn.784): (a) Organisms do much more than merely "respond" to environments. Even the tiniest viruses actively reshape their environments by incessantly moving bits of matter from place to place. (b) In humans, this active reshaping becomes a predominating, deliberate reshaping, as the shaping becomes fired by our imagination and rationality. Through the technological result, we have reshaped our Planet and are now on the verge of beginning to reshape the universe. (c) The organ that makes this technological reconfiguration possible is of course the brain. It is indeed composed of material, but of material so special in its organization that it can do things -- reshape the world, think -- that no other natural (and, at present, artificial) material can do. It is in recognition of the evolutionary uniqueness of this thinking material that many people refer to it as mind. We need not discard a word -- and the important concept it emphasizes -- merely because it has been abused by Greek philosophers and others. For more on this, see my "Technology as the Cutting Edge of Cosmic Evolution," paper presented at 150th Annual Meeting of the AAAS in N.Y.C., May 27, 1984. See also Paul M. Churchland's "Matter and Consciousness" (M.I.T. Press, 1984).