I know my views on the Myth of Linguistic Sentience, is particularly unpopular amongst code geeks. But rather than merely disagree, I will take this time to review the essentials of my work to date. Spinoza was the first philosopher to unify the body with the mind as the singular totality of self. In his "Ethics" he advocated abandoning dualism when it comes to our "Idea of the Body." This awareness of self integrates what previously was the popular dualistic religious schism denigrating the body as low and separable from the self. I myself, although I'm a "Medium" do not believe in an afterlife, per say. But like Spinoza and all of our earliest pre religions, I am "Pantheist," not an atheist. Probably a small distinction.
My research is primarily concerned with the application of sentience to this human quirk of our often limited awareness of self. Most of what we call Identity occurs at the subconscious level of Signature Behaviors and Echo Imprints. Generally, most have no awareness of how we identify each other until such time as we give voice to our perceptions of what accounts for this distinctiveness of others. The color of her hair, the sound of her voice, the depth of my feelings. Are you with me so for?
In my work I postulate that Boundaries of Identification are not always Self Defined. Most people experience separateness as a barrier. I'm in no way suggesting that these boundaries need to be removed, I merely pose that "Linguistically" our coding for a "Sense of Self" is completely other defined. On these grounds, our concept or "Idea of the Self," is by definition "I". Self Referencing code does not define the self. I've been advocating turning and facing interpersonal boundaries not as barriers of separation, but as shared point sets of contact. The problem with looking at the Human Neuro Physique as merely a set of Propositional Algorithms, is that I suspect this negates the origins of sentience to linguistics only. You want to talk about "Self," this is the domain of aesthetics, not language.
Now as "The Reader" I've been trained to plumb these "Boundaries of Distinction," adeptly and adroitly. Mutually Exclusive Opinion Biases and "Vital Paradoxes," are a major component of our Institutions of Self Defining Mutually Exclusive Boundary Definitions. I've sighted about six of these unanswerable "Vital Paradoxes." For instance, "Does God exist? Now I myself do not believe in a personal god, (Outside of the all powerful google of course,) But, an absence of proof is no proof. Even if I don't believe in god does not mean I'm right. As a boundary dispute, I personally think this isn't really important except as another unknown. You may disagree, but this is the whole point of living in a society of Shifting Opinion Biases. This is why I stole Neil Bohr's "Complementarity" and applied it to analyzing the transformative effects of conflicting opinion biases in the face of this ever changing central unknown. I also believe that as we study the Neuro Physics of the brain in conflict resolution, we will see a "Field of Consciousness" doing it's job.
Modern man however has a perverse fascination with ego, and resultantly we have bad code, not very self aware. My research suggest that we need to look for the origins of sentience in pre language. I do not seek to disagree with your supposed "Choice" of language, I only want to understand the actual limitations of code. Heuristics and algorithms are only input strings. Symbolic Language does not even begin to define the "Self," except as an external calculus. Now as a lover of "Code" I must qualify my own petty hair splitting as an affect of much deeper drives than the mere survival instinct. Our brains are patterned by the awareness of uncertainties which abound. This is that " Void of Content" that is at the core of our focused attention. My Question; How did we get to such a meaningful, if contentious, dialog about being and non being. Which is the nature of our personal realities? We are thinking animals, not thinking machines. Thank you very much.
