Polymirize --

Thanks for your reply.

I must admit, I'm neither a computer engineer, nor a neuroscientist, but I do also understand that a computer and a brain aren't the same in all aspects. Maybe it was a bit naive of me to jump to the conclusion that a brain and a computer essentially function the same way... I'm just piecing together what I know from college psychology and my (admittedly limited) knowledge of computers. The analogy still makes sense to me, though maybe you could explain a little further why it doesn't to you? If you're willing to humor my sense of curiosity.

I want to know why you feel that identifying with an organism has a more engaging aspect to it than identifying with a machine? Aren't all the part of a machine as equally engaged as the parts of an organism? In fact, with a machine, assuming its well engineered, one could say that all the parts are essential. Everything involved plays its own vital role. With organisms, well, let's just say I still have an appendix, and its not doing anything for me.
Really, whether you think of yourself or the universe as a machine or an organism is completely arbitrary, and two different ways of looking at the same thing (the universe as a whole). But often (at least from my own experience) when one thinks of a machine, they think of something cold, lifeless, and purely mechanical. When one thinks of an organism, they think of something alive and conscious. Whether an organism is 'better' than a machine is also completely subject to opinion, but IMO it has little to do with how efficiently they work in relation to the essentiality of parts. Flaws (such as your useless appendix) are necessary products of an evolution which machines have not had to go through (at least not independently).

As I said in my second post, it's a matter of attitudes and values, and so (just like with beliefs) it is impossible to prove that one is better than the other. To me, personally, thinking of the universe as something as alive and conscious as I am, rather than thinking of myself as a soul trapped in a mechanical body, is more appealing.