1 déc 2012

The brain, computer of the Human-Machine, a living robot

Submitted by Anonyme (non vérifié)

We all know what robots are, or better said what they would be. The main difference we would find with humans is the lack of senses but also, and this is a key point, the lack of “thought”. Robots would be like a computer: a program would run on it, but there is no way that a program could run for itself.

There must be a programmer, and therefore a function for the robot, which would be only a computer that can handle things.

In fact, as dialectical materialists, we can not accept such an idealist view. It is clear for example that the dissociation between body and mind comes from religion, that the concept of “choice” is also religious.

God would have given to the human the ability to choose; we come back here to the myth of Adam and Eve. And we can see that old major bourgeois thinkers – from Descartes to Bacon – follows this conception. Humanity would freely inherit the world.

We can not agree, of course. For us, if we take a look at the brain, we see that informations are encoded and stored. But where are they stored? In the spirit, in the soul? No, they are stored in a material place: the brain itself.

The difference between a computer and the brain is only the matter used. The brain is living matter, and because of this, it has “plasticity.” And what is plasticity? Nothing else than dialectical movement of matter storing impressions.

This is the main reason why mental illness are so hard to understand for bourgeois methods in science. Mental illness can not be understand without the high level of plasticity of the brain.

Bourgeois scientists believe there is the thought on one side, the brain on the other, and they consider that the brain has a dysfunction that impeaches the thought to be fine. It is the logic of a priest.

They believe also that a dysfunction can only stay as it is and that it knows no evolution; that is why they use massively of chemicals to “cure” the patient, and why they use animal testing: their model is static, because of their conception of the world.

Their error is also to separate in an abstract way the body and the mind. They see for example that the human brain is, in proportion with the body it is linked to, the biggest. They notice that with an average volume of 1400 cubic centimetres, the human brain is even three times larger than the one of the chimpanzees.

But they don't find “why” - whereas for dialectical materialists, there is no “cause” and no “effect”. Matter is in movement, and the brain, as a storage place, is modified according the needs of matter in movement.

And if we take a look at the “cost” of brain, we can see it consumes a lot of energy. Using a brain can not be permitted in situation where living matter has mainly to preserve itself.

And here we understand also why there is no thought. The brain could only “grow” where it was possible to provide energy to it, according needs that were existing and exist. This means that the brain could only be developed in a social group.

An individual – better said a living being relying only itself to survive – could not afford to give too much energy for storage and calculation. Living beings that are part of a group need more and more storage and calculation as the group becomes more complex, and there is the possibility for it because the group facilitates the survival of the members.

So, there is no thought, because thought consists only in storage and calculation, which are the same for all the members of the group.

And this is not all. The individuals do not exist apart of reality. They are in a relationship with the whole biosphere. Their ability to exist brings also a necessity of storage and calculation. This is another fact that makes that there can not be a “thought”.

So, what does the brain does? The brain reflects reality. But not only reality - also reality of the individual – that's why, because of the feelings felt, the experiences made, there are “individual differences”, or “personality”.

But apart this question of taste, linked to cultural experiences, there are no differences, and in communism, all the people will think the same. That's why there will be no conflicts: it is the triumph of mere logic.

Therefore, bourgeois scientists are not taking a good direction. They profit from technologies in seeing the activities of the brain – for example with the Allen Brain Atlas or the Open Connectome Project.

But they miss the most important part: the fact that thought is merely a reflect.

Maybe we can find a great work that reveals this aspect. Karel Čapek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), a czech play from 1921, not only proposed the word “Robot” to the world.

For those who know the play, the “robots” are in fact “clones”; they are living organisms, but with no “souls”. And at the end, as they begin to think, they destroy the humans to take their place.

In the play, the robots are shown as merely logical workers. It is not difficult to understand that in fact the play denounced communism, where a new humanity, logical and without any “individual” thought, triumphs.

In the play, the robots even all look the same - they are “Universal Robots” - and the producers at the end explained they should have make “national” robots, with different languages, so that they could not unite!

We find exactly the same in the movie THX 1138, made by George Lucas in 1971. The human society lives underground, in monochrome buildings, everybody's head is shaven, there are no individual feelings, the state programs the people and economy.

In this criticism of communism, the masses take drugs and must pray, a computer answering the prayer with: “You are a true believer. Blessings of the state, blessings of the masses. Thou art a subject of the divine. Created in the image of man, by the masses, for the masses. Let us be thankful we have an occupation to fill. Work hard; increase production, prevent accidents, and be happy.”

What we have here, in R.U.R. or THX 1138, is the fear of the acceptance that the human thought is merely a reflect; they are cultural-ideological productions made to celebrate the fiction of “freewill”.

We find exactly the same in the use of “heroic fantasy” against science-fiction, in the celebration of “creation” and the negation of production.

But there can be no creation. For us, dialectical materialists, what exists is a transformation of what was; there is no beginning, no ending.

Dialectical materialism refuses the fiction of freewill. It follows the path of Avicenna, Spinoza, the great French Thinker of the Lumières Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751), author of “Machine man”.

Humans are living beings, machines with sensations, living matter produced by the dialectical movement of eternal matter. The brain reflects the transformation, and what the humans “choose” follows in fact the law of necessity.

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