Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id CAA04258 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 27 Feb 2002 02:56:00 GMT Message-ID: <004b01c1bf39$a2aef2a0$cbc0b3d1@teddace> From: "Dace" <edace@earthlink.net> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: Re: ality (cont'd) Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 18:51:18 -0800 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0048_01C1BEF6.93991540" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
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> > > Assumption 2 (experience, thought and feeling are physically and
> > > chemically meaningless) is not a self-evident axiom and is in fact a
> > > major difference between these two competing hypothesis.
> >
> >Have you ever met a physicist or geologist or meteorologist who
> >referred to equations of "experience" or terrestrial samples of "emotion"
> >or high altitude pockets of "desire?" I haven't. Everything comprising
> >the world of human consciousness is meaningless to the physical
> >sciences.
> >
> > > No one on this list server would agree with your making this an axiom.
> >
> >"Argument to consensus." You keep resorting to this fallacy, so I
> >thought I'd look it up.
>
> Let's skip it. I asked for self-evident axioms. If an axiom is
> self-evident it ought to be something that people are in agreement on like
> 1+1=2.
An axiom is a statement which is immediately knowable, without the need for any sort of deduction. The statement, 1 + 1 = 2, must be deduced from the concepts of "one," "two," "addition" and "equality." The fact that everyone happens to know the definitions of these four terms and therefore recognizes its truth-value does not make it axiomatic.
> You are the one saying you don't need proof because your arguments
> are 'a priori'. Now you are saying that your axioms don't need to be
> things that everyone agrees on.
Who says humans are always rational?
> >You know, sometimes when everyone is wrong, it's because they're all in
> >thrall to the same mutant meme. This one goes by the name of
> >materialism but is actually a form of idealism based around physics. In
> >back of physics is math, not "material substance," an obsolete notion
> >chucked long ago. Like a lot of pathological memes, it spreads by
> >posing as its opposite, as if calling idealism "materialism" made it any
> >less ethereal. It's adherents profess the most rigorous reductionism
> >from abstract to concrete. Yet when it comes to brains and artifacts,
> >they find all sorts of fanciful properties that could only have been
> >projected from human imagination.
> Yes I suppose you are right. Material substance is just illusion. When the
> plane ran into the World Trade Center nothing actually happened. And
> when the guy jumped out of the100th story floor the road below was just
> illusion too. If only you had gotten to him first he wouldn't have died.
It appears you've missed out on the history of 20th century physics. No
one takes the notion of material substance seriously anymore. The very concept of "substance" has been relegated to "metaphysics." The world isn't built out of solid atoms, Ray. It's built out of the statistical quanta.
> >The brain is no more reducible to neurons than the mind is to thoughts.
> >To be organic is to be whole.
>
> All right then. We'll start with the whole instead of the neurons. You
> know that grey thing in your skull? Since that is the brain and since mind
> and the mind are heads and tails of the same thing then the mind is the
> grey thing in your skull too.
Let's say we flip a coin. I bet on tails, and it comes up tails. You might just say, "Well, tails and heads are really the same thing, so it also came up heads."
> How do you have a physical object as tails that somehow
> relates with this thing that has these time travel properties as heads.
> We got these neurons doing all sorts of interesting stuff but no time
> travel. What it is about the grey thing that allows this to happen?
How does the present connect to the past? How does existence relate to
oblivion? How could it be that something which at once had being has since become nothingness? Where's the line separating the two? Where's the demarcation between this moment and the one before? It's nowhere, of course. The present doesn't need to somehow relate to the past. They're simply different aspects of the same thing: Time. Matter skates on the surface while intrinsic form occupies the depths as well as the surface. There's only one moment, and the motion of time is its continual expansion, always staying present while embracing the past. The same goes for the mind. It retains the past while remaining current.
You're still coming at this question from the dualist perspective, treating mind and brain as two things that somehow need to be joined. Start with mindbrain, as with a coin, and then define the two perspectives from which we view it. That's your answer.
Ted
>
> Ray Recchia
>
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