Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id HAA24569 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 25 Jan 2002 07:33:11 GMT Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 23:28:51 -0800 Message-Id: <200201250728.g0P7Sp421132@mail18.bigmailbox.com> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary X-Mailer: MIME-tools 4.104 (Entity 4.116) X-Originating-Ip: [65.80.160.204] From: "Joe Dees" <joedees@addall.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: necessity of mental memes Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk('binary' encoding is not supported, stored as-is)
>Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 05:11:46 -0500
> memetics@mmu.ac.uk Keith Henson <hkhenson@cogeco.ca> Re: necessity of mental memesReply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>
>At 01:31 AM 24/01/02 -0800, "Joe Dees" <joedees@addall.com>
>
> wrote:
>
>snip
>
>>The assumption is that there would be an omniscient and omnipotent viewer
>>and actor to mandate and register such thinge; this is an unfounded (and
>>unfoundable) assumption. OF COURSE everthing appears fron hindsight to be
>>necessary, just as things appear in foresight to be contingent, but in the
>>present cusp where causally effective decisions are made, neither
>>assumption can be made, for the appearance/reality distinction collapses
>>on this plane.
>
>I make no assumptions of O & O actors and the viewer was thought experiment
>only.
>
>>Consider another point: photonic pairs are constantly popping into and out
>>of phase space. Are we willing to postulate that causality reaches out of
>>existence intop ninexistence to cause them to appear exactly when and
>>where they do, and to return to nonexistence under the same terms? This
>>involves a contradiction in terms born of the overreaching of causality
>>into nonexistence. We can predict within a certain margin or error how
>>many pairs will appear and disapprae, but this statistical model has no
>>force on the individual event, any more than the decay of radioactive
>>elements is predictable IN PRINCIPLE on the basis of individual atoms, or
>>the quantum jump of electrons is predictable IN PRINCIPLE for each atom
>>exposed to energy excitation. Find a working alternative to quantum
>>physics and quantum chromodynamics that possessses anything near their
>>empirical predictive power, and I will perhaps acknoledge that you are
>>speaking from the realm of knpwledge, rather than the!
>>realm of belief.
>
>I don't see how QM fails to fit the caused or random explanation for
>everything. But if you don't buy this, then are you proposing something
>else within the boundary of what is known? Or outside it?
>
I am simply asserting that we are causative agents, and that between the Scylla of genetics and the Charybdis of environment are multiple choices we can make. Infants are, in a way, little machines that are programmed to engage the world and thus develop enough complexity to transcend their programming. Lower animals are circumscribed by instinctual responses to environmental stimuli; that is, they lack individuality. We possess a degree of individual freedom in our responses, and in our selections of stimuli.And you did not address at all my contentions that in a deterministic universe, there would have been no reason for a causally inefficacious self-conscious awareness to evolve, or that there could be no such thing as truth or falsity or any other value, or that meaning could not exist, or that there could be no claims of delusion as to a true nature of things, for delusion requires a deludee who can apprehend the meaning difference between delusion and reality, and t!
ruth vs. falsity, vs. meaninglessness. The white dog truth is that the free assumption of the lack of free will embroils the asserter in such a miasmically self-contradictory quagmire that circus contortionists would flock to admire if the conceptual knots entailed were instead physical ones.
>
>Keith Henson
>
>
>
>
>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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