Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id SAA17530 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 19 May 2002 18:57:50 +0100 Message-ID: <006f01c1ff5c$b9c42c40$e72de90c@attbi.com> From: "Philip Jonkers" <philipjonkers@prodigy.net> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: Fw: Saving the ethnosphere (part II) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 10:43:42 -0700 Organization: Prodigy Internet Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_006A_01C1FF22.0B1B6440" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
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Phil:
> To me life is meaningful in the sense of carrying more information (or
> information with higher density) than life-less matter.
Ted:
I applaud your willingness to follow the logic of mechanism to its inescapable conclusion. If life is mechanism, then we are superceded by our own machines, which surpass us in every utilitarian measurement (or soon will). Natural language must yield to mathematics, the original artificial language, and its cybernetic descendants. Mechanism is nihilism. Unfortunately, most people who subscribe to orthodox biology have no idea what the implications are: We literally don't exist (as conscious agents), and life has no fundamental meaning.
Thanks Ted, really I have to stick to my guns so yes I feel confortable wherever my honesty of reasoning leads me to.
I like to consider myself to be analyst, a spectator rather than a policy maker or world improver. I feel sorry for myself
and other people if they feel the emphasis lying on the latter instead of the former.
Anyway, I do feel that our own `man-made' machines will surpass us in the not too distant future. Grant provided us
with an interesting article that made a compelling point in showing that this might already happen in the 21-st century.
If you missed it:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0184.html
Natural languages are full of semantic ambiguities, a communicatively retarding flaw that is not seen in machine-language
which is fully mathematical consistent by construction. As a consequence the communication between machines will be
more efficient and faster. Humans may have to yield to machines sooner than we like to believe. Let's be careful
out there.
> > > Life is an expression or manifestation of solar-induced energy that
> > > happens to exists because of favorable conditions here on earth.
> > > Life is equally superfluous as it is spontaneous.
> >
> >
> > Life is self-expression. There's no physics of the self. It's hard to make
> > measurements and equations when the only number you've got is one.
>
> In that sense: yes. Self-reflection is hardly admissable in the department of
> science,
Only if science is essentially physics. No statement is physically
meaningful unless it can be expressed mathematically. Self-existence and self-reflection cannot be physical properties. It's not physics that explains the difference between life and nonlife or people and trees. If science is to tackle life, it must find its metaphysical roots.
I don't know about this. If there exist neural correlates of self-reflection and consciousness and so on the use of a
metaphysical agent is not necessary. Ockam's razor forbids.
Phil.
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