Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id HAA21985 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 24 Jan 2002 07:38:32 GMT Message-ID: <017301c1a4b1$81b25800$6621aace@oemcomputer> From: "Philip Jonkers" <philipjonkers@prodigy.net> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <200201230606.g0N66n111862@mail12.bigmailbox.com> Subject: Re: The Barren Desolate Wasteland of Superdeterminism Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 23:31:13 -0900 Organization: Prodigy Internet Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Joe:
> These three terms are inextricably linked; free will, self-consciousness,
and meaning. In the absence of the ability to choose and to efficiently act
upon choice, it is impossible to comprehend how evolution could select the
ability to more profitably choose, and as that is exactly what the
reflective distance conferred by self-consciousness permits, there could be
no reason for such a sterile and impotent faculty to evolve. Likewise with
meaning. Meaning is meadiately (through self-consciousness) dependent upon
choice. Preferences can only be real if they can result in action that
chooses between them, and they can only be real if the alternatives they
choose between mean different things, for conscious self-awarenesses. In
the absence of choice and the ability to act to achieve one's choice,
nothing can mean anything more or less than anything else, which pretty much
kills memetics as a discipline, and just about every other aspect of human
endeavor. We would be left!
> with the nonalternative that nothing means anything, not Buddhism, not
Islam not any religion, not science, not anything. Such a doctrine leads in
an exigent and necessary lockstep to the death of value, and in fact, to the
conclusion that value was never born. Further than that, it leads to the
conclusion that self0consciousness, value and meaning are even less than
illusions, for there remains nothing to be deluded, and no right or wrong,
and no reason to value astronomy over astrology, or religion over science,
for right and wrong cannot exist. But neither can any meaning; any
semantics. All the communications which humans have bounced off each other
since time immemorial have been meaningless, and have been forordained, by
nothing but the happenstance structure of the Big Bang genesis, since the
cosmos' beginning. All of this is, of course, directly contradicted by the
existence and nature of personal experience, which conclusively deposits the
faith-based doctrine!
> of superdeterminism into the dustbin of fallacious religious beliefs.
I guess all of the contemporary sciences have proven that there is no such
thing as
(large-scale) determinism. The one who demonstrated this fact of life most
convincingly is quantum mechanics, a theory which is probabilistic right
from its postulates. Nature seems to behave according to statistical laws as
75 years
of confirming verification of QM laws have shown. Everything consists of
particles which all obey quantum equations of motion, so everything
possesses
an intrinsic indeterministic seed.
Philip.
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