"never" (I know you didn't say that, but it's implied), is a pretty strong claim. Like with Searle's Chinese Room, I find these kinds of impossibility arguments fairly weak and full of semantic problems. Whenever people argue "consciousness", or "general AI", or "meaning", it's always an exercise in moving the goal posts.
When I read abstracts like this: "Cybersemiotics constructs a non-reductionist framework in order to integrate third person knowledge from the exact sciences and the life sciences with first person knowledge described as the qualities of feeling in humanities and second person intersubjective knowledge of the partly linguistic communicative interactions, on which the social and cultural aspects of reality are based. The modern view of the universe as made through evolution in irreversible time, forces us to view man as a product of evolution and therefore an observer from inside the universe. This changes the way we conceptualize the problem and the role of consciousness in nature and culture. The theory of evolution forces us to conceive the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities together in one theoretical framework of unrestricted or absolute naturalism, where consciousness as well as culture is part of nature. But the theories of the phenomenological life world and the hermeneutics of the meaning of communication seem to defy classical scientific explanations. "
My confidence isn't increased that this book has anything interesting to say. It sounds like the kind of post-modernist verbiage coming out of a lot of humanities departments. I mean seriously, why anyone in a STEM field actually write a sentence like "modern view of the universe as made through evolution in irreversible time, forces us to view man as a product of evolution and therefore an observer from inside the universe." Like what is "irreversible time" adding there? It's kind of redundant, and the awe-inspiring implication: man is a product of evolution, and therefore an observer in the universe? Earth shattering. And all phenomena, from fundamental life sciences to culture, are part of nature? No one's ever considered that before.
My guess is, if you asked a STEM major to write this abstract, they could sum it up with 70% less words. They'd also drop implicitly obvious claims that no one disputes.
I'm betting that this is book is just a less philosophically rigorous version of Searle's argument, given the implication that emergent phenomena "seem to defy classical scientific explanations".
When I read abstracts like this: "Cybersemiotics constructs a non-reductionist framework in order to integrate third person knowledge from the exact sciences and the life sciences with first person knowledge described as the qualities of feeling in humanities and second person intersubjective knowledge of the partly linguistic communicative interactions, on which the social and cultural aspects of reality are based. The modern view of the universe as made through evolution in irreversible time, forces us to view man as a product of evolution and therefore an observer from inside the universe. This changes the way we conceptualize the problem and the role of consciousness in nature and culture. The theory of evolution forces us to conceive the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities together in one theoretical framework of unrestricted or absolute naturalism, where consciousness as well as culture is part of nature. But the theories of the phenomenological life world and the hermeneutics of the meaning of communication seem to defy classical scientific explanations. "
My confidence isn't increased that this book has anything interesting to say. It sounds like the kind of post-modernist verbiage coming out of a lot of humanities departments. I mean seriously, why anyone in a STEM field actually write a sentence like "modern view of the universe as made through evolution in irreversible time, forces us to view man as a product of evolution and therefore an observer from inside the universe." Like what is "irreversible time" adding there? It's kind of redundant, and the awe-inspiring implication: man is a product of evolution, and therefore an observer in the universe? Earth shattering. And all phenomena, from fundamental life sciences to culture, are part of nature? No one's ever considered that before.
My guess is, if you asked a STEM major to write this abstract, they could sum it up with 70% less words. They'd also drop implicitly obvious claims that no one disputes.
I'm betting that this is book is just a less philosophically rigorous version of Searle's argument, given the implication that emergent phenomena "seem to defy classical scientific explanations".