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posted 01. February 2003 22:36
Featured in PCID Volume 2.3
Thoughts on Thinking Matter
by James Barham
Abstract-The word design is commonly used to refer to either a process of conscious reflection and planning, or the product of this process. Either way, it is essentially connected with thinking. In the process sense, design connotes the particular end that a thinking agent has in mind. For instance, my design may be to build a better mousetrap. In this sense, design is both intentional (directed toward having more dead mice) and normative (more dead mice is good). In the product sense, design refers to a particular organization imposed on matter by the agent as the means to an end. In this example, the new arrangement I come up with is the means embodied in matter for the fulfillment of the end of more dead mice. In this sense, design is teleological (more dead mice is its goal).
Like a number of problems in biology, design presents us with a chicken-and-egg sort of circularity. Mousetraps are designed by minds instantiated in brains, but brains themselves seem to be a lot like mousetraps. That is to say, to many, neurons seem to be arranged for the sake of thinking in much the same way that springs and levers in mousetraps are arranged for the sake of dead mice. But if that is so, then who or what designed brains? Perhaps human brains were designed by other minds somewhere else---say, in another galaxy or on another plane of being (this is the Intelligent Design position). But if these other minds are supposed to be instantiated in matter, then we have the same problem all over again. If not, then we are left with disembodied minds---which are even more mysterious than the embodied sort. To avoid both horns of this dilemma, a completely different approach is required.
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