Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id QAA10355 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 6 Apr 2001 16:02:20 +0100 Message-ID: <3ACDD9A9.23F45959@bioinf.man.ac.uk> Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2001 15:58:49 +0100 From: Chris Taylor <Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk> Organization: University of Manchester X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Determinism References: <20010406123549.AAA6680@camailp.harvard.edu@[128.103.125.215]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
OK. Firstly, scientific theories are provisional until death. Even
'laws' in physics are still provisional, they are just assumed to be
closer to perfect predictive power; they may not even represent reality
as such, just predict it. No-one should dare to claim that they *truly*
know reality. It's a bit like the two versions of the terminology in
stats - the 'real' (never truly known) and the 'sample'.
Secondly, I've revised my view of the necessary ingredients for a mind,
and Robin beat me to it; some sort of input is necessary (after all I'd
be daft to say otherwise given that I view a mind as more or less
nothing but memes), but that's all (besides the brain). It would be
interesting to see what you get with no input though (ever pointed a
video camera at its own monitor?); the awful abuse cases that came close
to this are interesting, but messy.
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Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
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