the necessary role of an analog perception system
You proclaim without evidence that "analog" is necessary, first off.
Second, you proclaim here without evidence that I do not think that there is an analog extension of "switches". Neurons are analog switches, however even binary switches can between them suitably create floating point structures, such that it's a distinction without meaning across the boundary.
The body influences the brain in a specific way, through signals created through linkages between some systemically released chemical and some target receptor.
As such, the messages sent between such systems would necessarily be communications of vague quantities of request or report associated with specific "static values".
As such, my model natively incorporates the concept of static values, as static systemic values are important for processing unites to gain local awareness of distant information.
Still, the nature of how that can function is limited, and unmagical in nature, and in fact we're what is thought of in ARINC terms as a "sampling message", whose function is "whenever you look at this message you are subscribed to, it has its most recent value and any values you have locally buffered".
By in large these are important, but only in some abstract way, like a sense that only measures a single analog value rather than a broad surface of them like more conventional senses. Many of these senses, the functional group that renders "socially reported self-awareness" is not directly aware of at all, instead receiving much more nuanced constructions from the history of that data typified in other ways like "hungry" or "(want to eat something green)" from the parts that are directly conscious of the history of such a sampling message.
Oftentimes, the numbers reported by such systems are represented as algorithmic executions, as precise values in terms of true mathematical constants. One of the things my boss talks about on occasion is how he wrote a program to fully preserve numbers as some identity.
The fact is, people put a lot of stock around and inappropriate magical thinking behind minutae like "analogueness" or "how often they get sensory data", when they don't understand the complexities of large scale systems well enough to say, track an exception from a node that was translatably reporting that something was wrong with the avionics controls in the pitot tube software, and translate that back through the system that was aware of some initial report of incorrect sensory state.
Thoughts are physical phenomena. You could, if you had some mechanism to translate the events you see, translate those events to "they are thinking about Napoleon", or "if they 'sashay' they will feel 'feminine'" and these would easily visible as physical facts about the system.
Clearly you are misinterpreting my statement that thoughts are physical, insofar as this does not mean, as you outright declare for me (and in a way I do not appreciate) that I would state something so patently ridiculous as that one's thoughts that they are Napoleon, for example, would mean that they were; it would not. It means exactly that physically, they think they are Napoleon, and that physically, you can know because of the particular shape of the contingent mechanisms in their skull and their current physical states report in some natural language unto the utterance "I am Napoleon"; and that the fact of holding this thought is a true fact about them.
What is clear is that you don't have the least actual bit of an idea how a structure actually results in a thought being had. Unless you have actually been through a machine learning course and fully understood how neurons switch on data
(generally in a continuous way; in fact activation functions must be in some way differentiable and continuous for training processes to effect them at all, which is why your expectation of "true" analog is so ridiculous as a goalpost!) to create phrases of truth about their inputs,
don't. Just. Don't.
If you wish to debate the ways neurons can produce output, learn how neurons actually produce output vigorously. Pass a course on the subject with better than a B-.
Thoughts don't leave behind a pathway of neurons, they are composed as the output of a pathway of neurons from an input, owing to their existing structure.
This existing structure is responsible for the rendition of that output already, in the presence of whatever input that an analogous structure in someone else's brain doesn't produce. How it renders that statement is immaterial to whether the statement was rendered, especially once the statement leaves the black box as a thing said, and a thing it hears itself say.
Finally, you have an issue wherein you liken my arguments to the belief someone is Napoleon. I don't. In fact I don't because I specifically point out that
"woman" is a concept of social construction, Napoleon is a statement of existing as an entity through history. The only references to existence as a collective entity throughout space and time that I have ever made are references to specific nutty metaphysical beliefs held by gnostics and occultists of the form I rarely associate with. I think I made a very tongue in cheek joke about that in the "inventing Jesus" thread.
I do not expect it is "more real" than gonads, though
it is as real.
It's just more important to a eusocial individual's place in an equal and free society than the outward and remediable, and it's just not addressable the way hormones and gonadal functions are.
Gonads are easy to deal with, you just hijack their sampling message and send a different sampling message. In fact this was how I often disconnected systems from some fault report chain: replacing messages rendered within a system.
Generally, these messages were in some "natural" format or some direct and complete representation of the natural format when I was doing that particular bit of work. I had to look at a massive set of enumerations, reconstruct smooth logical flows from very far flung bits of text, and so on.
My position on sex, however, relies on the central fact that "woman"
doesn't have any single, unified meaning. It is a mere "utterance" that means many things depending on the context and
it is not an appropriate concept for making decisions on separations of groups for legal purposes. It is a social concept and a social concept subject to change over time in a way that makes it unsuitable.
Instead, the law must be based on some statement of fact not directly linked to a y social concept, but grounded in facts current to "the moment of inquiry".
It, as a social concept, is simply not a useful concept for which hormones some people are allowed to access, or avoid, at select parts of their lives, and what" is endogenously" does not informed what "ought be reported".
The existence of testicles does not confer some right to be heard by the body or even remain a part of it, when the brain is that which is given power and privilege to choose.
As to the existence of the accomplishment, lifespan, and logical thought, these are also grounded in specific arguments.
The reality is that the decision that sex isn't what you are going to make your life about and not having kids are both strongly correlated, and arguably clearly causal to increased accomplishment in life.
Eunuchs of China did have a strong track record for being more concerned with logic and reason and structure and systems, and this very well was likely driven by the fact that they cared more about service and education than they cared about having penises.
As to the importance of outlier behaviors, some "outlier behaviors" (read, some uncommon behavioral phenotypes) are often very important in a population, and fill in their own behavioral mode, and this is observed clearly and directly in a number of eusocial species. Not every individual is born with an interest or knack for banging rocks, not every individual takes to weaving, and to be fair, few take to discussion of the basis for sound reasoning and thought.
Rather, I expect that the atypical are a small but vital part in the functioning of large groups of primates, and not just humans but
our ancestors as far back as they've been banging rocks together. The provision of hormone modifying treatments to the gender atypical to subvert a single "sampling message" within the system to represent the same message structure and contents as in another system is specifically what I vie for. I would prefer this be easier for the people of today than the people of the past, who were often limited to castration, and had no chance to even "try before you buy".
If you would like to use your knowledge of systems theory to present some abstract concept which more correctly models the system, I'm all ears.
But please for the love of fuck don't assume the sorts of systems I have in mind are "simplistic".
