On 12 Sep 2011, at 05:29, Craig Weinberg wrote:
This view of the psyche as being the inevitable result of sheer biochemical momentum is not even remotely plausible to me. It denies any input/output between the mind and the outside world and reduces our cognition to an unconscious chemical reaction. If that were the case then you could never have a computer emulate it without exactly duplicating that biochemistry. My view makes it possible to at least transmit and receive psychological texts through materials as communication and sensation but your view allows the psyche no existence whatsoever. It's a complete rejection of awareness into metaphysical realms of 'illusion'.
No, it is the exact contrary. If we are digitalizable machine, consciousness (of the numbers' relations, not of humans) is the producer/selector of the physical realities. The only thing rejected in metaphysics or in the illusions is the primary matter of the Aristotelian physicalists.
So the mechanist hypothesis can explain both where consciousness comes from, and where the appearances of the laws of physics come from, and this in a precise verifiable way, making mechanism testable (and confirmed up to now).
To maintain a primary existence of matter, you have to conceive a non computable notion of mind AND a notion of matter which succeeded in diagonalizing against all computations.
In fact you have to reify Matter, Mind and to reintroduce a kind of identity which makes the mind-body problem non soluble, actually not even addressable.
Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
