Re: Free-will, interdependence

["Dan Fiscus" <***>]

Judith,

I think these are different issues, but maybe I nitpick:

Judith Rosen wrote:

> A blow to the back of the human head where it joins the neck is
> quite capable of rendering any living human as unconscious and
> inert as Data was after Riker hit the "off button", for example.

This is damage, destruction of internal structure/organization - not
just removing link to necessary inputs. This would be like taking a
sledgehammer to a computer more than unplugging. Not as loaded
an example, for me.

> Therefore, the fact that you could unplug a computer and turn it
> off doesn't really prove that whatever "intelligence" we can creat
> artificially is less than a human's. Human beings are as dependent
> on oxygen as any computer is on electricity.

But that oxygen is supplied not by inert surroundings, but by our
"better half" and required co-bionts - autotrophic plants. Individual
heterotrophic organisms are perhaps more like machines in the
ways you describe, but life as a whole (ecosystemic teams, loops)
have internalized plugs into physical context in complementary
ways - plants "plug in" to animals (we produce the CO2 they need)
and vice versa. Life as a whole plugs in to the physical environs in
ways that to me are not simple like a computer's power plug, but
are complex and self-referential.

But still, maybe the stronger value of my example of using the
existence of a simple, mechanical power plug (or your simple
mechanical on/off switch for Data) comes not when the machine
stops and is inert, but in the fact that unplugging (switching off)
and replugging again does not harm the machine, but is impossible
for an organism or life as a whole (ecosystem), beyond a certain
threshold (like 5-10 minutes of no oxygen and human life ends).
This goes back to the issues of entanglement with time and also
fractionability of parts from whole and the relative effects of
"stopping time" for machines (no big deal) vs life (very big deal).
Oddly, what seems like a liability (entangled interdependence
with time) is actually a key feature and strength of life. In the
same way that it depends on continuous, unbroken time stream,
it is able to extend itself forward into that same stream in ways
that separable, time-fractionable machines cannot (and I think
never will). Can Data create progeny to carry on his form of life?

Dan