The ultimate aim of the GOLEM-NEODE research project is to prove that the brain is a computer, and that features thought uniquely biological such as consciousness and emotionality can be constructed using non-living physical equivalents in modern digital computers. The logical conclusion is that it should be possible to engineer animal and human brains, minds and selves using available construction methods, typically those used to design and make computers and robots. A secondary goal is to debunk those who would support non-scientific approaches to consciousness, such as those based on quantum-scale phenomena, or those who use excessively mathematical analyses to deflect critics [2].
In the following series of websites, created between 2011 and 2021, sufficient arguments and evidence to support GOLEM-NEODE theory have been presented. Earlier websites contain (often embarrassing, but always interesting) errors which are corrected in later ones. Only the most recent sites ( 'your-brain' and 'golem-theory') contain a satisfactory solution to non-living consciousness and emotionality. However, the older websites are important because they establish the historical provenance, and thus authenticity, of the theory's key tenets.
https://chuckdemus.wixsite.com/chi-cog
https://cybercognition.webstarts.com
www.biointelligence2.webnode.com
www.conscious-computation.webnode.com
Authors preface
When I started this research project in 2011, it was really as a way to get my honours- the minimum scientific research degree. As I got deeper and deeper into studying AI, I began to have an awful realisation- that the real enemies of scientific progress are not, as Richard Dawkins would have us believe, the few ultra-religious odd-bods who steadfastly cling to a belief in a Abrahamic god. Instead, I found that it is a few high-profile, media-savvy, success-addicted professional philosophers who block a wider belief in the idea of scientific closure[1]. These include Jerry Fodor, Ned Block, and fellow Australian David Chalmers. While I languish in comfortable, but hardly lavish anonymity, they publish book after book casting unreasonable doubt on the few of us who remain honest to the 'can do' legacy started by Spinoza, Descartes, Kant and Uexkull, all 'humble men' who believed that in a hundred years, perhaps two, humanity would understand its own mind completely. Their faith in science was accompanied by the following belief- that saving the world from impending human violation needs one thing and one thing only- full understanding of the human psyche (ie individual and collective mechanisms of brain, mind and self).
1. 'Closure' refers to the enlightenment idea that the universe operates according to laws and that, once we find these laws, we will be equipped to analyse every possible system, even the problematic and reflexive consciousness of our own existence.
2. Why is IIS theory so darn hard to understand?