On 6/27/2012 8:51 AM, John Clark wrote:
>Mot plausibly two minds because complex self-reference is chaotic and mind
state
diverge from very little difference.
Maybe, but I doubt if it's like the butterfly effect, I doubt if its quite as sensitive
as that, otherwise we would not be observing personality traits in people that persist,
largely unchanged, for many decades.
But personality can remain stable while thoughts (and diaries) diverge. It may be like a
butterfly effect with personality as a chaotic attractor. Randomness, e.g. potassium 40
decays in the bloodstream, may deflect the trajectory of thought, but only into nearby
channels consistent with personality. That's why I think the claim that, "It's either
determined or random." is misleading. Thoughts and actions may be determined in the sense
of constrained to a fairly narrow probability distribution, and yet random.
Brent
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