Mechanical Mind…A Reductionist Approach to the Mind vs. Body Problem

WARNING: This is an extremely nerdy idea that I’ve been playing with in my head.  Reductionism is the school of thought that attempts to understand complex ideas in nature and reduce them to the interaction of their parts to get a better insight.  This is seriously pseudo-philosophy at best; and pseudo-BS at worst.

Introduction: A lot of people are interested in creating the ‘singularity’; and with the inevitable technological advances to be made in the 21st century, people are hopeful that this will soon be in reach.  The singularity is a theorhetical concept where algorhythyms and data can be compiled and collected in a way in which that data would create a supra-human inteligence.

This singularity wouldn’t just be an extremely capable computer, the singularity seems to carry with it the requisite of sentience; self-consciousness, and with it, the ability to make choices.  Not choices from a program, but choices made by itself in a rational way, with its own accord.  This got me thinking…if algorithms can theoretically be mapped in this way, can humans be reduced in this way also?  And would that reduced human be the same human, a copy, or a nothing?  Would the theoretical singularity be an engineered ‘person’?  Is consciousness and rationality the defining requisite to being a human?  Can consciousness even exist outside of biological life?

Over the next couple of Sundays, I wish to attempt to answer some of these questions (hopefully) through the route of reducing concepts of the natural human mind and the theoretical mind of the singularity.  My plan is to first address the dynamics of the biological mind and translate it across to the mechanical mind.  I’m borrowing a lot from 18th century thinkers on this subject.

This idea of the Mind vs. Body problem is as old as philosophy itself.  A lot of thought went into this in classical philosophy, and also during the philosophical boom in the 18th century.  But as technology presses humanity into uncharted waters, where problem in the dichotomy of the mind versus body problem are bound to appear more frequently, we should give thought to this problem again.