> -----Original Message----- > From: rwas [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Saturday, 15 September 2001 3:08 p.m. > > Sequential, temporal, > in-the-box thinking is not how to transcend the physical in my view.
I think some of the people here would argue that you *can't* transcend the physical (or possibly the computational). I appreciate that that sounds very in-the-box, but if you look at the sort of thing physicists (who *tend* to be materialists - not always) have come up with in last 20-30 years, I'd say there has definitely been *some* jumping out of the box... including quite a lot by David Deutsch. > In addition, if there is anything my own personal journey has taught me > is that to breach boundaries in understanding, must discard > preconceived notions. It would seem that if one were interested in > truth, one adopt a realm of purely abstract thinking to find answers to > such an esoteric question as consciousness. But what I feel is > happening here is an attempt to force understanding to fit an almost > certainly flawed initial assumption about existence. I agree. Every breakthrough in human thought has been at the expense of preconceived notions. Are you saying we *should* "adopt a realm of purely abstract thinking to find answers to such an esoteric question as consciousness" ? (If so I think a lot of the people here would agree - the approach using computationalism is VERY abstract). However - what I'm most interested to know is, what is the "almost certainly flawed initial assumption about existence" ? Charles
