Re: Losing Control
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 1:40 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 10:03:51 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 10:36 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: If you ARE the sequence of neurological events and the neurological events follow deterministic or probabilistic rules then you will also follow deterministic or probabilistic rules. That's a tautology. If I move my arm, then I am causing improbable neurological events to occur. Muscles, cells, molecules follow my intention rather than their own. The cells are not causing my arm to move - if they were, that would be a spasm. Muscles and cells follow your intention if they receive input from conscious centres in your brain, but the cells in those centres follow the mechanistic rules that neuroscientists know and love. If that were so, then neuroscientists would not need to ask me to move my arm, they would simply predict when I think I am moving my arm. And after that they would predict the lottery numbers. Your intentions are the result of the activity in your brain. Your intentions do not cause any magical top-down effects. The only magic is the idea that activity in my brain knows about anything other than activity in my brain. The fact that both of us are now manipulating our own brain chemistry, striated muscle tissue, fingertips, and keyboard from the top-down is indisputably obvious. Your brain doesn't dictate what you will say or do - it is your personal experience which shapes your brain activity at least as much as your experience is shaped by it. A top-down effect would result in things happening at the low level seemingly magically. If it is all consistent with physics then it isn't a top-down effect. Again and again I bring this up and you say that I misrepresent you, that I haven't understood your theory, while it is you who have not understood the meaning of your own words. But there is no evidence of a breach in the normal chain of causality in the brain or anywhere else. Don't you think it should be obvious somewhere after centuries of biological research? I can't help it that you are incapable of understanding my argument. I have addressed your straw man many times already. I am trying to explain to you that you are contradicting yourself. If you agree that the brain functions consistently with physical laws then you have to to agree that consciousness does not directly affect brain behaviour, since there is no place for consciousness in chemical equations. This is not to say that consciousness does not exist or is not important, just that it is not directly or separately or top-down causally efficacious. I think that the current scientific position is likely a kind of delusional convulsion. a post traumatic nostalgic compensation for the revelations of the 20th century. There is no such thing as probability in physics, only an appearance of such from a partially informed perspective. There is nothing any more classical about biology than there is anything else, as photosynthesis already shows quantum effects. http://qubit-ulm.com/2010/09/quantum-coherence-in-photosynthesis/ Hey, look what else has quantum effects in biology: http://qubit-ulm.com/2010/10/quantum-effects-in-ion-channels/ You do realise that quantum level effect are crucially important in the operation of the semiconductors in computers? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Losing Control
On Thursday, April 11, 2013 2:57:39 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 1:40 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 10:03:51 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 10:36 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: If you ARE the sequence of neurological events and the neurological events follow deterministic or probabilistic rules then you will also follow deterministic or probabilistic rules. That's a tautology. If I move my arm, then I am causing improbable neurological events to occur. Muscles, cells, molecules follow my intention rather than their own. The cells are not causing my arm to move - if they were, that would be a spasm. Muscles and cells follow your intention if they receive input from conscious centres in your brain, but the cells in those centres follow the mechanistic rules that neuroscientists know and love. If that were so, then neuroscientists would not need to ask me to move my arm, they would simply predict when I think I am moving my arm. And after that they would predict the lottery numbers. So you are saying that my arm moves at random times like the lottery pays off randomly? How come I can predict when I am about to move my arm and be right every time? Your intentions are the result of the activity in your brain. Your intentions do not cause any magical top-down effects. The only magic is the idea that activity in my brain knows about anything other than activity in my brain. The fact that both of us are now manipulating our own brain chemistry, striated muscle tissue, fingertips, and keyboard from the top-down is indisputably obvious. Your brain doesn't dictate what you will say or do - it is your personal experience which shapes your brain activity at least as much as your experience is shaped by it. A top-down effect would result in things happening at the low level seemingly magically. You only think that because your world view is panmechanistic instead of panpsychic. Since we observe the ordinary top-down control of our own voluntary muscles and some mental capacities, the challenge is not to explain away this fact to preserve an arbitrary attachment to a particular cosmology, but to see that in fact, all that we see as being low and high level are defined by relativistic perception. Low and high are aesthetic perspectives, not objective realities. In reality, low and high can be discerned as separate in some sense and they are united in another sense. Of the two, Top-down is more important, since all bottom up processes are meaningless if a person is in a coma. If it is all consistent with physics then it isn't a top-down effect. It is the job of physics to be consistent with reality, not the other way around. Again and again I bring this up and you say that I misrepresent you, that I haven't understood your theory, while it is you who have not understood the meaning of your own words. Seriously, that is your best argument? That I must not know what my own words mean since they don't make sense to you? It may not be your fault. I have yet to see someone with the strong panmechanistic view successfully question their own own belief, so it is entirely possible that you won't be able to do that, barring a life-changing neurological or psychological event. Rest assured that I understand precisely my own words and your words, and it is you who have not seen more than one side of the argument. But there is no evidence of a breach in the normal chain of causality in the brain or anywhere else. Don't you think it should be obvious somewhere after centuries of biological research? I can't help it that you are incapable of understanding my argument. I have addressed your straw man many times already. I am trying to explain to you that you are contradicting yourself. If you agree that the brain functions consistently with physical laws then you have to to agree that consciousness does not directly affect brain behaviour, since there is no place for consciousness in chemical equations. There doesn't need to be any place for consciousness in chemical equations, just as there doesn't need to be any place for images in the pixels or flicker rate on a video screen. When we watch TV, we watch TV programs, not pixels turning off and on. This is what the universe is made of - perceptual relativity. Existence is a false concept - relevance of sense is the universal truth. This is not to say that consciousness does not exist or is not important, just that it is not directly or separately or top-down causally efficacious. Then in what sense do you claim consciousness exists? As a metaphysical ephiphenomenon which appears magically in never-never land for no conceivable
Leibniz uses the concept of entelechy (potential energy) rather than energy
In the quotes below, L refers to entelechies as souls. Only living being have souls of any type. From my own knoweledge of the history of philosophy the notion of entelechy seems similar to Schopenhauer's concept of WILL-- the World as Will and Power -- and -- Heaven forbid- Nietzsche's later concept of the Will to Power. See also http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/leibniz/monadology.html 19. If we are to give the name of Soul to everything which has perceptions and desires [appetits] in the general sense which I have explained, then all simple substances or created Monads might be called souls; but as feeling [le sentiment] is something more than a bare perception, I think it right that the general name of Monads or Entelechies should suffice for simple substances which have perception only, and that the name of Souls should be given only to those in which perception is more distinct, and is accompanied by memory. But in God these attributes are absolutely infinite or perfect; and in the created Monads or the Entelechies (or perfectihabiae, as Hermolaus Barbarus translated the word) there are only imitations of these attributes, according to the degree of perfection of the Monad. (Theod. 87.) 62. Thus, although each created Monad represents the whole universe, it represents more distinctly the body which specially pertains to it, and of which it is the entelechy; 63. The body belonging to a Monad (which is its entelechy or its soul) constitutes along with the entelechy what may be called a living being, an... 66. Whence it appears that in the smallest particle of matter there is a world of creatures, living beings, animals, entelechies, souls. See also http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/leibniz/monadology.html 19. If we are to give the name of Soul to everything which has perceptions and desires [appetits] in the general sense which I have explained, then all simple substances or created Monads might be called souls; but as feeling [le sentiment] is something more than a bare perception, I think it right that the general name of Monads or Entelechies should suffice for simple substances which have perception only, and that the name of Souls should be given only to those in which perception is more distinct, and is accompanied by memory. But in God these attributes are absolutely infinite or perfect; and in the created Monads or the Entelechies (or perfectihabiae, as Hermolaus Barbarus translated the word) there are only imitations of these attributes, according to the degree of perfection of the Monad. (Theod. 87.) 62. Thus, although each created Monad represents the whole universe, it represents more distinctly the body which specially pertains to it, and of which it is the entelechy; 63. The body belonging to a Monad (which is its entelechy or its soul) constitutes along with the entelechy what may be called a living being, an... 66. Whence it appears that in the smallest particle of matter there is a world of creatures, living beings, animals, entelechies, souls. - Roger Clough Dr. Roger Clough NIST (ret.) 4/11/2013 http://team.academia.edu/RogerClough -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The world is in the brain
On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 6:08 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/10/2013 2:08 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi Telmo, Yes, those are good counter examples. But I think to say pain and pleasure are fine-tuned by evolution... is a sleight of hand. Pain and pleasure are phenomenological primitives. If evolution created those primitives, how did it do that? By what mechanism? Another way to think of this is to acknowledge that pain signals are mediated by special nerves in the nervous system. But what makes those nerves any different from a nerve that carries information about gentle pressure? You may be able to point to different neuroreceptors used, but then that shifts the question to why different neuroreceptors should result in different characters of experience. You have to ground the interpretation in behavior and its relation to evolutionary advantage. People who put their hand in the fire withdraw it quickly and exclaim to warn others. People that don't suffer reproductive disadvantage. Brent Of course, but it still involves a sleight of hand. Let me offer this example by way of trying to make this clear. You have creature A which does not suffer pain. Then some mutation occurs and creature B, descended from A, is born with the ability to feel pain when exposed to fire. We agree that creature B is more likely to reproduce than creature A. My question is, what is the nature of the mutation that suddenly ushered in the subjective experience of pain? What is the mechanism? Terren -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The world is in the brain
On 10 Apr 2013, at 15:32, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 9:15:09 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Apr 2013, at 20:48, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, April 8, 2013 5:38:44 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 07 Apr 2013, at 19:20, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.04.2013 19:12 meekerdb said the following: On 4/6/2013 11:54 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.04.2013 02:40 Craig Weinberg said the following: Ok, here's my modified version of Fig 11 http://multisenserealism.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/33ost_diagram.jpg I believe that you have understood the paper wrong. The authors literally believe that the observed 3D world is geometrically speaking in the brain. Yes our 3d model of the world is in our minds (not our brains). It's not there geometrically speaking. Geometry and there are part of the model. Dog bites man. Well, if you look into the paper, you see that authors take it literally as in neuroscience mind means brain. Mind belongs to philosophy. But mind is different from brain. And mind is part of both cognitive science and theoretical computer science. To identify mind and brain is possible in some strong non computationalist theories, but such theories don't yet exist, and are only speculated about. To confuse mind and brain, is like confusing literature and ink. Neurophilophers are usually computationalist and weakly materialist, and so are basically inconsistent. If we used a logic automata type of scheme, then mind and brain would be the same thing. ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDCwrbqHfTM The Future of Computing -- Reuniting Bits and Atoms Neil Gershenfeld talking about using digital fabrication to replace digital computation. Interesting, but out of topics. Each bit would be an atomic configuration, and programs would be atomic assemblies. Two apples is not the number two. With logic automata, the number two would not be necessarymatter would embody its own programs. With comp, matter relies on the numbers law, or Turing equivalent. Maybe this makes it easier to see why forms and functions are not the same as sensory experiences, as no pile of logic automata would inspire feelings, flavors, thoughts, etc. That is what we ask you to justify, or to assume explicitly, not to take for granted. The fact that logic automata unites form and function as a single process should show that there is no implicit aesthetic preference. A program is a functional shape whose relation with other functional shapes is defined entirely by position. There is no room for, nor plausible emergence of any kind of aesthetic differences between functions we would assume are associated with sight or sound, thought or feeling. Why? Logic automata proves that none of these differences are meaningful in a functionalist universe. ? Bruno Craig Bruno but would output behaviors consistent with our expectations for those experiences. Craig Bruno Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The world is in the brain
On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 5:57 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/10/2013 1:36 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: This is close to an idea I have been mulling over for some time... that the source of the phenomenological feeling of pleasure is in some way identified with decreases in entropy, and pain is in some way identified with increases in entropy. It is a way to map the subjective experience of pain and pleasure to a 3p description of, say, a nervous system. You will just further muddle the meaning of entropy. I agree. Damage to the body (associated with pain) can usually (always?) be characterized in terms of a sudden increase in entropy of the body. Consider dribbling some liquid nitrogen on your skin. Hurts doesn't it. But the entropy of your body is (locally) reduced. The pain comes from neurons sending signals to your brain. They use a tiny amount of free energy to do this which increases the entropy of your body also. Your brain receives a few bits of information about the pain which represent an infinitesimal decrease in entropy if your brain was in a state uncertainty about whether your body hurt. Agree. I am abandoning the idea of entropy in the chemistry sense in light of Telmo's and your objections. However, there may be a way to characterize the mind - i.e. the software that runs on the brain architecture in objective terms (such as the information-theoretic notion of entropy) that might yield possible mappings to subjective feelings of pain and pleasure. I subscribe to the idea that we only experience our internally constructed world, so it seems possible to abandon physical entropy without sacrificing the idea of a mental entropy. Perhaps this is also true in the mental domain, so that emotional loss (or e.g. embarrassment) can also be characterized as an increase in entropy of one's mental models, but this is pure speculation. It hardly even rises to speculation unless you have some idea of how to quantify and test it. Sure. Our understanding of the emergent dynamics of neural activity is still pretty meager. But as I am assuming comp, I therefore assume that there is a lawful, deterministic relationship among these emergent dynamics as well (a determinism that is orthogonal to the determinism of ion channels etc) - and so I find it entirely plausible that one could quantify and test the higher level dynamics, in the same way that you could make a study of the causal relationships among patterns that emerge on a Game of Life automata. I think one of the more important areas of research is characterizing these emergent dynamics from the bottom up, modeling them, and then proceeding to the next level of emergent dynamics. My hunch is that there are several such emergent layers, corresponding with structures that scale up eventually to the size of the entire brain, resulting in chains of supervenience. Psychology is the study of the highest layers - we need to connect them to the lower layers. Without that understanding we will never truly understand how drugs affect our psychology, for example. With that understanding we will have a much better grasp of the mechanism of mind, how to predict it, etc. The case is even harder to make with pleasure. It would be weird if it were true, but so far it is the only way I know of to map pleasure and pain onto anything objective at all. Damasio proposes that pleasure and pain map into levels of various hormones as well as neural activity. This may be true, and yield useful insights, but still just shifts the burden of explanation onto something else. Terren Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscribe@**googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.**comeverything-list@googlegroups.com . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/**group/everything-list?hl=enhttp://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/**groups/opt_outhttps://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The world is in the brain
On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 5:28 PM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.comwrote: On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 11:08 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Telmo, Yes, those are good counter examples. But I think to say pain and pleasure are fine-tuned by evolution... is a sleight of hand. Pain and pleasure are phenomenological primitives. If evolution created those primitives, how did it do that? By what mechanism? Completely agree. I mean pain and pleasure as things that you can observe with an fMRI machine. As for the 1p experience of pain and pleasure... wish I knew. I don't think evolution created these primitives in this latter sense. Another way to think of this is to acknowledge that pain signals are mediated by special nerves in the nervous system. But what makes those nerves any different from a nerve that carries information about gentle pressure? You may be able to point to different neuroreceptors used, but then that shifts the question to why different neuroreceptors should result in different characters of experience. Yes, I've always been puzzled by that. My hunch is that the 'pain' neurons feed into circuits that can be characterized objectively in a certain way, that is distinguishable from circuits that receive sensory information with no particular pain/pleasure valence, so that it doesn't matter in particular what the neurotransmitters or hormones are that mediate the circuitry itself. Rather, it is the cybernetic description of the circuits in question that provide the hook on which to hang distinguishable identification of various kinds of qualia. Pressing forward with the entropy idea, perhaps the pain circuitry has the result of increasing the (information-theoretic) entropy of the global mind, and therefore we experience it as pain. Keep in mind I am not arguing for this - just exploring the idea. Maybe you or someone else who is sympathetic to this style of inquiry can improve on the idea of entropy... it certainly has its problems. Terren One way out of this to posit that phenomenological primitives are never created but are identified somehow with a particular characterization of an objective state of affairs, I suspect the same. the challenge being to characterize the mapping between the objective and the phenomenological. That is my aim with my flawed idea above. Cool. Sorry for not getting what you were saying at first. You still have to deal with my counter-examples though, I'd say... (forgetting the evolutionary rant) Telmo. Terren On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 4:52 PM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 10:36 PM, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: This is close to an idea I have been mulling over for some time... that the source of the phenomenological feeling of pleasure is in some way identified with decreases in entropy, and pain is in some way identified with increases in entropy. It is a way to map the subjective experience of pain and pleasure to a 3p description of, say, a nervous system. Damage to the body (associated with pain) can usually (always?) be characterized in terms of a sudden increase in entropy of the body. Perhaps this is also true in the mental domain, so that emotional loss (or e.g. embarrassment) can also be characterized as an increase in entropy of one's mental models, but this is pure speculation. The case is even harder to make with pleasure. It would be weird if it were true, but so far it is the only way I know of to map pleasure and pain onto anything objective at all. Hi Terren, Interesting idea, but I can think of a number of counter examples: cold/freezing, boredom, the rush of taking risks, masochism (for some people), the general preference for freedom as opposed to being under control, booze, I suspect life is just meaningless from the outside. I'd say that pain and pleasure are fine-tunned by evolution to maximise the survivability of species in an environment that is largely also generated by evolution. It's a strange loop. Terren On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 4:18 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi use...@rudnyi.ru wrote: On 10.04.2013 07:16 meekerdb said the following: On 4/9/2013 12:19 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... I have seen that this could be traced to Schrödinger’s What is Life?, reread his chapter on Order, Disorder and Entropy and made my comments http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2013/04/schrodinger-disorder-and-entropy.html Still tilting at that windmill? A) From thermodynamic tables, the mole entropy of silver at standard conditions S(Ag, cr) = 42.55 J K-1 mol-1 is bigger than that of aluminum S(Al, cr) = 28.30 J K-1 mol-1. Does it mean that there is more disorder in silver as in aluminium? Yes, there is more disorder in the sense that raising
Re: Free-Will discussion
On 10 Apr 2013, at 17:24, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, April 6, 2013 6:49:45 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Apr 2013, at 01:51, Craig Weinberg wrote: You already are aware of the relevant aspects of your brain function, and aware of them in a way which is a million times more detailed than any fMRI could ever be. No, you bet on them. You are not aware of your brain, in any direct way. Some antic believed consciousness comes from the liver. That consciousness is related to a brain is a theory, there are only evidence, we cannot experience any theory. By the same understanding that we know the brain is more likely to be the seat of consciousness than the liver, we also know that whatever we experience personally is most available impersonally as brain activity. We can manipulate brain activity magnetically and experience a change in our consciousness, when the same is not true of any other organ. This does not mean that our experience is caused by the brain or that brain characteristics can be translated into conscious qualities, but the correlation shows us that what an fMRI reveals is the correlation of events between space-time body and sensory-motor self. Far from being a map, most of the private experience is utterly opposite and unrecognizable to any of the forms or functions on the 'other side.' I was just saying that we are aware of our experience, then we built theories. Some of those theories are instinctive, other are build during early childhood, and others are brought by long histories. We are not experiencing a brain. In fact we can't according to the usual theory that there are no sensory neurons in the brain. Bruno Craig Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The world is in the brain
On Thursday, April 11, 2013 10:54:43 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Apr 2013, at 15:32, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 9:15:09 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Apr 2013, at 20:48, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, April 8, 2013 5:38:44 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 07 Apr 2013, at 19:20, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.04.2013 19:12 meekerdb said the following: On 4/6/2013 11:54 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.04.2013 02:40 Craig Weinberg said the following: Ok, here's my modified version of Fig 11 http://multisenserealism.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/33ost_diagram.jpg I believe that you have understood the paper wrong. The authors literally believe that the observed 3D world is geometrically speaking in the brain. Yes our 3d model of the world is in our minds (not our brains). It's not there geometrically speaking. Geometry and there are part of the model. Dog bites man. Well, if you look into the paper, you see that authors take it literally as in neuroscience mind means brain. Mind belongs to philosophy. But mind is different from brain. And mind is part of both cognitive science and theoretical computer science. To identify mind and brain is possible in some strong non computationalist theories, but such theories don't yet exist, and are only speculated about. To confuse mind and brain, is like confusing literature and ink. Neurophilophers are usually computationalist and weakly materialist, and so are basically inconsistent. If we used a logic automata type of scheme, then mind and brain would be the same thing. ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDCwrbqHfTM The Future of Computing -- Reuniting Bits and Atoms Neil Gershenfeld talking about using digital fabrication to replace digital computation. Interesting, but out of topics. Why is it off topic? It addresses exactly what we are talking about - the gap between pure function and form. By closing that gap, we can see that it makes no difference and that there is no problem to running an anesthetic program. Each bit would be an atomic configuration, and programs would be atomic assemblies. Two apples is not the number two. With logic automata, the number two would not be necessarymatter would embody its own programs. With comp, matter relies on the numbers law, or Turing equivalent. Matter also relies on geometry, which comp cannot provide. Maybe this makes it easier to see why forms and functions are not the same as sensory experiences, as no pile of logic automata would inspire feelings, flavors, thoughts, etc. That is what we ask you to justify, or to assume explicitly, not to take for granted. The fact that logic automata unites form and function as a single process should show that there is no implicit aesthetic preference. A program is a functional shape whose relation with other functional shapes is defined entirely by position. There is no room for, nor plausible emergence of any kind of aesthetic differences between functions we would assume are associated with sight or sound, thought or feeling. Why? Because the function is accomplished with or without any sensory presentation beyond positions of bits. With comp you already assume the immaterial so its easier to conflate that intangible principle with sensory participation, since sense can also be thought of as immaterial also. With logical automata we can see clearly that the functions of computation need not be immaterial at all, and can be presented directly through 4-D material geometry. In doing this, we expose the difference between computation, which is an anesthetic automatism and consciousness which is an aesthetic direct participation. Logic automata proves that none of these differences are meaningful in a functionalist universe. ? That any function performed by a logical automata would be the same configuration of bricks whether we ultimately read the output as a visual experience or an auditory experience. Craig Bruno Craig Bruno but would output behaviors consistent with our expectations for those experiences. Craig Bruno Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and
Re: Free-Will discussion
On Thursday, April 11, 2013 11:07:01 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Apr 2013, at 17:24, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, April 6, 2013 6:49:45 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Apr 2013, at 01:51, Craig Weinberg wrote: You already are aware of the relevant aspects of your brain function, and aware of them in a way which is a million times more detailed than any fMRI could ever be. No, you bet on them. You are not aware of your brain, in any direct way. Some antic believed consciousness comes from the liver. That consciousness is related to a brain is a theory, there are only evidence, we cannot experience any theory. By the same understanding that we know the brain is more likely to be the seat of consciousness than the liver, we also know that whatever we experience personally is most available impersonally as brain activity. We can manipulate brain activity magnetically and experience a change in our consciousness, when the same is not true of any other organ. This does not mean that our experience is caused by the brain or that brain characteristics can be translated into conscious qualities, but the correlation shows us that what an fMRI reveals is the correlation of events between space-time body and sensory-motor self. Far from being a map, most of the private experience is utterly opposite and unrecognizable to any of the forms or functions on the 'other side.' I was just saying that we are aware of our experience, then we built theories. Some of those theories are instinctive, other are build during early childhood, and others are brought by long histories. We are not experiencing a brain. In fact we can't according to the usual theory that there are no sensory neurons in the brain. If we are sitting inside of an airplane, it could be said that we don't 'directly experience' the airplane, as we might not be able to tell the difference, if we woke up there, between the seats on a plane and the seats on a train. If a piece of the plane fell off though, then we would be able to infer air travel. The same goes for the brain. We are only aware of it when some unexpected experience is presented. Tinnitus, vertigo, visual phosphenes, proprioceptive changes, phantom smells, etc. All of these give us direct experiences of our own neurology which are beyond theory. It's multi-layered, so that on one level we do hear a sound that sounds like it is coming from outside of our body, but on another level we can test and understand that it can't be. Craig Bruno Craig Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
WHOOPS! The taboo of Platonism
WHOOPS ! I left out a critical phrase in my previous email. The Taboo of Platonism Ask most mathematicians if they believe that they invent new theorems or discover them. They will almost always say that they discover them. But if they discover those truths, there must be a pre-existing Platonic realm of mathematical truth to which they naturally have access. But if you aski them afterwards uif they believe that there is a pre-existing Platonic realm in which mathematics exists, they will deny it for the most part. Because it is taboo to admit to the existence of a Platonic realm. - Roger Clough i - Roger Clough Dr. Roger Clough NIST (ret.) 4/11/2013 http://team.academia.edu/RogerClough -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The Taboo of Platonism
It may be taboo, but I think the taboo is there for a reason - which is that to day that there is a Platonic realm implies a physical place in which pure forms or ideas are present independent of any content. Ask a mathematician instead whether there is a sense of mathematical truth that is universal, I don't think there would be as much resistance. Sense does not need a separate realm because sense can only be here. Craig On Thursday, April 11, 2013 11:41:36 AM UTC-4, Roger Clough wrote: The Taboo of Platonism Ask most mathematicians if they believe that they invent new theorems or discover them. If they discover those truths, then there is a pre-existing Platonic realm of mathematical truth to which they naturally have access. But if you aski them afterwards uif they believe that there is a pre-existing Platonic realm in which mathematics exists, they will deny it for the most part. Because it is taboo to admit to the existence of a Platonic realm. - Roger Clough Dr. Roger Clough NIST (ret.) 4/11/2013 http://team.academia.edu/RogerClough -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The world is in the brain
On 10 Apr 2013, at 23:57, meekerdb wrote: On 4/10/2013 1:36 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: This is close to an idea I have been mulling over for some time... that the source of the phenomenological feeling of pleasure is in some way identified with decreases in entropy, and pain is in some way identified with increases in entropy. It is a way to map the subjective experience of pain and pleasure to a 3p description of, say, a nervous system. You will just further muddle the meaning of entropy. Damage to the body (associated with pain) can usually (always?) be characterized in terms of a sudden increase in entropy of the body. Consider dribbling some liquid nitrogen on your skin. Hurts doesn't it. But the entropy of your body is (locally) reduced. The pain comes from neurons sending signals to your brain. They use a tiny amount of free energy to do this which increases the entropy of your body also. Your brain receives a few bits of information about the pain which represent an infinitesimal decrease in entropy if your brain was in a state uncertainty about whether your body hurt. Perhaps this is also true in the mental domain, so that emotional loss (or e.g. embarrassment) can also be characterized as an increase in entropy of one's mental models, but this is pure speculation. It hardly even rises to speculation unless you have some idea of how to quantify and test it. The case is even harder to make with pleasure. It would be weird if it were true, but so far it is the only way I know of to map pleasure and pain onto anything objective at all. Damasio proposes that pleasure and pain map into levels of various hormones as well as neural activity. Glial cells seems to have some rôle in chronic pain. Also. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The world is in the brain
On Thursday, April 11, 2013 11:54:17 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Apr 2013, at 22:55, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 10.04.2013 22:52 Telmo Menezes said the following: ... I suspect life is just meaningless from the outside. I'd say that pain and pleasure are fine-tunned by evolution to maximise the survivability of species in an environment that is largely also generated by evolution. It's a strange loop. What difference do you see when one changes evolution in your sentence by god? The difference is that evolution assumes some mechanism. With comp you can define pain by the qualia associated to anything contradicting some universal goal. The most typical universal goal is protect yourself. Why isn't the condition of satisfying universal goal = false sufficient? I imagine we send robots on a far planet where there are some acid rains which might demolish their circuits. We will provide mechanism so that when such rain occurs the robots find quickly some shelter. No need of pain at this stage, but if the machine is Löbian, she will be able to rationalize her behavior, so that when we ask her why she protect herself, she will will talk about her non communicable qualia she got when the rain is coming, and she might well call it pain. What does it mean to talk about that which is non-communicable? What she calls it is irrelevant, but do her reports describe the qualia as sharp or dull? Excruciating or irritating? Does it make her want to rip her eyes out of her skull or simply believe that it is time to escalate the priority of a search for protection? Is there any indication at all that a Löbian machine experiences any specific aesthetic qualities at all, or do you assume that every time we ask a machine a question and it fails to communicate an answer that it means that they must have a human-like conscious experience which they cannot express? Such a theory predicted that if someone burn alive through suicide, that person would not necessarily feel pain. As sad as it is, this has been confirmed by some testimony of people doing just that. They describe being burn even as pleasurable, until they are brought to some hospital and then the pain becomes quite acute. (Hmm... I don't find the interview of women who burns themselves in Afghanistan when their husband cheat them, I will search when I have more times). This can also be related with some ZEN technic to diminish pain by accepting it, and used in Japan to survive Chinese interrogations). Sure, pain is relative. Like all sense, it is defined by contrast, previous experience, and expectation. Pain can be the qualia brought by a frustration in a situation contradicting instinctive universal goals. The qualia itself can be explained by the combination self-reference + truth, that is the relatively correct self-reference, which lead the machine to acknowledge non justifiable truth. The negative aspect of the affect is brought by the contradiction with respect to universal goal, and is usually more intense when the goal is instinctive or hidden. Note that this needs a notion of truth, so the Platonist God is not far away, making your point, after all. Self-reference + truth is no substitute for aesthetic presence. The notion of self-reference you are using is a superficial one rooted in symbol manipulation rather than proprietary influence. Selfness defined this way is a silhouette with no content. In reality, authentic selfhood arises from aesthetic qualities experienced, not from logical conditions or non-communicable residues of arithmetic. Craig Bruno Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript:. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Scientific journals
On Wed, Apr 10, 2013, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: There is nothing in numerology or astrology which is even remotely as flaky as modern cosmology. After several statements of this sort I don't see how anybody who values rationality can take anything that Craig Weinberg says seriously. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Scientific journals
On Wed, Apr 10, 2013Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com wrote: Their admissions standards have already tanked Can you give a example? John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Scientific journals
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 12:47 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: After several statements of this sort I don't see how anybody who values rationality can take anything that Craig Weinberg says seriously. What about Schrödinger? Schrödinger didn't say There is nothing in numerology or astrology which is even remotely as flaky as modern cosmology nor did he say I couldn't have any more interest in astrology if I tried. I have been analyzing charts since 1988. Astrology and numerology are by far the most interesting and useful subjects that I have ever encountered in my life and he also didn't say Most scientific papers I have looked at contain a huge amount of mumbo jumbo. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Scientific journals
On Thursday, April 11, 2013 1:27:44 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 12:47 PM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: After several statements of this sort I don't see how anybody who values rationality can take anything that Craig Weinberg says seriously. What about Schrödinger? Schrödinger didn't say There is nothing in numerology or astrology which is even remotely as flaky as modern cosmology nor did he say I couldn't have any more interest in astrology if I tried. I have been analyzing charts since 1988. Astrology and numerology are by far the most interesting and useful subjects that I have ever encountered in my life and he also didn't say Most scientific papers I have looked at contain a huge amount of mumbo jumbo. I don't expect others to take astrology or numerology seriously. I didn't until I actually investigated them myself. What I found was interesting, partly because they point to an understanding of principles which are neither completely real nor completely unreal. It appears that these are the kinds of principles which are beneath and behind rationality itself. As far as my comments on modern cosmology and scientific jargon, I would expect that more enlightened minds would be able to see our current belief system in the context of a history of belief systems which were each in their time considered the final truth but which eventually proved profoundly incomplete. It may not be obvious to you that the current system is taking on water, but it is to me. For every nugget of useful truth discovered in the current system, how much time is wasted weaving a web of perceived legitimacy? Craig John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
In the current world economic crisis, is capitalism doomed ? You decide.
Hi - In the current world economic crisis, is capitalism doomed ? You decide. See Karl Marx (BBC Documentary Series) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQuRHVNGiYo Dr. Roger Clough NIST (ret.) 4/11/2013 http://team.academia.edu/RogerClough -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Why do particles decay randomly?
On Thursday, April 11, 2013 1:43:20 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: It's a bit odd to ask why a random event happened; if you could explain why then there would be a reason for it to happen, and then it wouldn't be random. I'm not asking why the ball landed on 26 black, I'm asking why is there a roulette wheel that balls land on rather than on a pre-determined square. If matter is deterministic, how could it behave in a random way? Craig John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The Taboo of Platonism
On 11 Apr 2013, at 17:41, Roger Clough wrote: The Taboo of Platonism Ask most mathematicians if they believe that they invent new theorems or discover them. If they discover those truths, then there is a pre-existing Platonic realm of mathematical truth to which they naturally have access. But if you aski them afterwards uif they believe that there is a pre-existing Platonic realm in which mathematics exists, they will deny it for the most part. Because it is taboo to admit to the existence of a Platonic realm. This is because they want the philosophy staying obvious (for them) and implicit. Then platonic realm can be a quite vague expression. Most mathematicians believe that most arithmetical truth is independent of them, but much less so will accept such independence for analysis or set theory. It is not platonism which is the taboo. It is philosophy, theology, and for some, even physics and applied sciences. I made a conference on the application of modal logic in computer science. A pure mathematician, who did not assist but hear about it told me: let modal logic for the philosophers and let computers for engineers, please do math. (I followed the option pure math because only that option provided a course in logic, and I believed in applied logic, but applied mathematics was already quite a taboo, for some of those pure mathematicians). The number theorist Hardy, which I love so much his books and papers, keep bragging being so proud working in a branch having no applications at all. He would not have been happy today, because number theory got *many* applications now. Some lives in Ivory Tower, and really dislike the idea that there is something outside ... Well, nobody is perfect (but don't tell them :) Bruno - Roger Clough Dr. Roger Clough NIST (ret.) 4/11/2013 http://team.academia.edu/RogerClough -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The world is in the brain
On 10.04.2013 23:59 meekerdb said the following: On 4/10/2013 1:55 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 10.04.2013 22:52 Telmo Menezes said the following: ... I suspect life is just meaningless from the outside. I'd say that pain and pleasure are fine-tunned by evolution to maximise the survivability of species in an environment that is largely also generated by evolution. It's a strange loop. What difference do you see when one changes evolution in your sentence by god? Do you see no difference? Are the operation of both equally mysterious to you? I do not see any difference. I do not see that the explanation through Evolution in the sentence above is better than the explanation through God. In the sentence above, in my view, the explanatory power is at the same level, either with Evolution or with God. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The world is in the brain
On 10.04.2013 22:58 meekerdb said the following: On 4/10/2013 1:38 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 10.04.2013 22:34 meekerdb said the following: On 4/10/2013 1:18 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 10.04.2013 07:16 meekerdb said the following: On 4/9/2013 12:19 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: ... You'd better look at what biologist say. For example: http://www.icr.org/article/270/ “and that the idea of their improving rather than harming organisms is contrary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which tells us that matter and energy naturally tend toward greater randomness rather than greater order and complexity.” Do you like it? You're referring me to an article on biological evolution by a guy with a Masters of Art on a Creationist website?? Do YOU like it? You will find a similar sentence also on an evolutionary website. That wasn't the question. The question was do you like it, do you believe it, can you support it with your own arguments? No, I do not like it. I have made this example to show what happens when people start mixing the thermodynamic entropy and biology. My note to this was I am afraid that this is a misunderstanding. The Second Law tells that the entropy increases in the isolated system. This is not the case with life on the Earth, as energy comes in and go out. In this case, if to speak of a system not far from the stationary state, Ilya Prigogine has proved that then the production of the entropy should be minimal. However, even this could not be generalized to the case when a system is far from equilibrium (this seems to be case with life on the Earth). Hence it is unlikely that the Second Law could help us when one considers evolution problems. In any case, I would recommend you the works of Ilya Prigogine – he was a great thermodynamicist. Such a statement will be the same. Look for example at Annila, A. S.N. Salthe (2010) Physical foundations of evolutionary theory. Journal of Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics 35: 301-321, http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jnetdy.2010.019 Which is behind a paywall ($224), and says nothing like that in the abstract. If you type the title in Google, you will find a free version. My comment to this paper is at http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2013/02/physical-foundations-of-evolutionary-theory.html You will find a link to a free version there as well. Evgenii -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Losing Control
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 10:55 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comjavascript:; wrote: Muscles and cells follow your intention if they receive input from conscious centres in your brain, but the cells in those centres follow the mechanistic rules that neuroscientists know and love. If that were so, then neuroscientists would not need to ask me to move my arm, they would simply predict when I think I am moving my arm. And after that they would predict the lottery numbers. So you are saying that my arm moves at random times like the lottery pays off randomly? How come I can predict when I am about to move my arm and be right every time? The lottery pays off unpredictably to an outsider, but not necessarily randomly. The lottery may itself know what its own outcome is going to be and feels that it has chosen it freely. This can be said about any process, since there is no way to know whether it is associated with consciousness or not. A top-down effect would result in things happening at the low level seemingly magically. You only think that because your world view is panmechanistic instead of panpsychic. Since we observe the ordinary top-down control of our own voluntary muscles and some mental capacities, the challenge is not to explain away this fact to preserve an arbitrary attachment to a particular cosmology, but to see that in fact, all that we see as being low and high level are defined by relativistic perception. Low and high are aesthetic perspectives, not objective realities. In reality, low and high can be discerned as separate in some sense and they are united in another sense. Of the two, Top-down is more important, since all bottom up processes are meaningless if a person is in a coma. Whether or not the scientific world view is wrong, the fact remains that a top-down effect would result in things happening at the low level SEEMINGLY MAGICALLY. If it is all consistent with physics then it isn't a top-down effect. It is the job of physics to be consistent with reality, not the other way around. In the above sentence I am not claiming that physics is right, I am not claiming there is no top-down effect, I am just pointing out that IF IT IS ALL CONSISTENT WITH PHYSICS THEN IT ISN'T A TOP-DOWN EFFECT. If you disagree with this then explain how you think the brain could consistently follow the mechanistic rules of physics while at the same time breaking these mechanistic rules due to the top-down action of free will, because that is what you are saying, over and over and over. Again and again I bring this up and you say that I misrepresent you, that I haven't understood your theory, while it is you who have not understood the meaning of your own words. Seriously, that is your best argument? That I must not know what my own words mean since they don't make sense to you? It may not be your fault. I have yet to see someone with the strong panmechanistic view successfully question their own own belief, so it is entirely possible that you won't be able to do that, barring a life-changing neurological or psychological event. Rest assured that I understand precisely my own words and your words, and it is you who have not seen more than one side of the argument. You repeatedly contradict yourself, and when this is pointed out your response is a non sequitur, as above. I am trying to explain to you that you are contradicting yourself. If you agree that the brain functions consistently with physical laws then you have to to agree that consciousness does not directly affect brain behaviour, since there is no place for consciousness in chemical equations. There doesn't need to be any place for consciousness in chemical equations, just as there doesn't need to be any place for images in the pixels or flicker rate on a video screen. When we watch TV, we watch TV programs, not pixels turning off and on. This is what the universe is made of - perceptual relativity. Existence is a false concept - relevance of sense is the universal truth. See, non sequitur. I point out that if you are right chemistry is wrong, you respond with this. This is not to say that consciousness does not exist or is not important, just that it is not directly or separately or top-down causally efficacious. Then in what sense do you claim consciousness exists? As a metaphysical ephiphenomenon which appears magically in never-never land for no conceivable purpose? Most interesting and important things in the world are epiphenomenal. There is no shame in this. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at
Re: Free-Will discussion
On 11 Apr 2013, at 17:28, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, April 11, 2013 11:07:01 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Apr 2013, at 17:24, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, April 6, 2013 6:49:45 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Apr 2013, at 01:51, Craig Weinberg wrote: You already are aware of the relevant aspects of your brain function, and aware of them in a way which is a million times more detailed than any fMRI could ever be. No, you bet on them. You are not aware of your brain, in any direct way. Some antic believed consciousness comes from the liver. That consciousness is related to a brain is a theory, there are only evidence, we cannot experience any theory. By the same understanding that we know the brain is more likely to be the seat of consciousness than the liver, we also know that whatever we experience personally is most available impersonally as brain activity. We can manipulate brain activity magnetically and experience a change in our consciousness, when the same is not true of any other organ. This does not mean that our experience is caused by the brain or that brain characteristics can be translated into conscious qualities, but the correlation shows us that what an fMRI reveals is the correlation of events between space-time body and sensory-motor self. Far from being a map, most of the private experience is utterly opposite and unrecognizable to any of the forms or functions on the 'other side.' I was just saying that we are aware of our experience, then we built theories. Some of those theories are instinctive, other are build during early childhood, and others are brought by long histories. We are not experiencing a brain. In fact we can't according to the usual theory that there are no sensory neurons in the brain. If we are sitting inside of an airplane, it could be said that we don't 'directly experience' the airplane, as we might not be able to tell the difference, if we woke up there, between the seats on a plane and the seats on a train. If a piece of the plane fell off though, then we would be able to infer air travel. The same goes for the brain. We are only aware of it when some unexpected experience is presented. Tinnitus, vertigo, visual phosphenes, proprioceptive changes, phantom smells, etc. All of these give us direct experiences of our own neurology which are beyond theory. It's multi- layered, so that on one level we do hear a sound that sounds like it is coming from outside of our body, but on another level we can test and understand that it can't be. As much as it is quite plausible, the brain existence is theoretical. Tinnitus, vertigo, visual phosphenes, proprioceptive changes, phantom smells, etc. All of these give us *direct* experiences of tinnitus, vertigo, visual phosphenes, proprioceptive changes, and phantom smells, and provide only *indirect* evidence that, perhaps, there is a brain, in some possible reality. Both inside and outside of the body, and the body themselves are theoretical constructs, which might have, or not, some reality, primitive or not. Bruno Craig Bruno Craig Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The world is in the brain
On 11 Apr 2013, at 17:13, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, April 11, 2013 10:54:43 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Apr 2013, at 15:32, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 9:15:09 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Apr 2013, at 20:48, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, April 8, 2013 5:38:44 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 07 Apr 2013, at 19:20, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.04.2013 19:12 meekerdb said the following: On 4/6/2013 11:54 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.04.2013 02:40 Craig Weinberg said the following: Ok, here's my modified version of Fig 11 http://multisenserealism.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/33ost_diagram.jpg I believe that you have understood the paper wrong. The authors literally believe that the observed 3D world is geometrically speaking in the brain. Yes our 3d model of the world is in our minds (not our brains). It's not there geometrically speaking. Geometry and there are part of the model. Dog bites man. Well, if you look into the paper, you see that authors take it literally as in neuroscience mind means brain. Mind belongs to philosophy. But mind is different from brain. And mind is part of both cognitive science and theoretical computer science. To identify mind and brain is possible in some strong non computationalist theories, but such theories don't yet exist, and are only speculated about. To confuse mind and brain, is like confusing literature and ink. Neurophilophers are usually computationalist and weakly materialist, and so are basically inconsistent. If we used a logic automata type of scheme, then mind and brain would be the same thing. ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDCwrbqHfTM The Future of Computing -- Reuniting Bits and Atoms Neil Gershenfeld talking about using digital fabrication to replace digital computation. Interesting, but out of topics. Why is it off topic? It addresses exactly what we are talking about - the gap between pure function and form. By closing that gap, we can see that it makes no difference and that there is no problem to running an anesthetic program. ? Each bit would be an atomic configuration, and programs would be atomic assemblies. Two apples is not the number two. With logic automata, the number two would not be necessarymatter would embody its own programs. With comp, matter relies on the numbers law, or Turing equivalent. Matter also relies on geometry, which comp cannot provide. ? Maybe this makes it easier to see why forms and functions are not the same as sensory experiences, as no pile of logic automata would inspire feelings, flavors, thoughts, etc. That is what we ask you to justify, or to assume explicitly, not to take for granted. The fact that logic automata unites form and function as a single process should show that there is no implicit aesthetic preference. A program is a functional shape whose relation with other functional shapes is defined entirely by position. There is no room for, nor plausible emergence of any kind of aesthetic differences between functions we would assume are associated with sight or sound, thought or feeling. Why? Because the function is accomplished with or without any sensory presentation beyond positions of bits. So there is some sensory presentation. With comp you already assume the immaterial so its easier to conflate that intangible principle with sensory participation, Which conflation? On the contrary, once a machine self-refers, many usually conflated views get unconflated. since sense can also be thought of as immaterial also. Which ease, but does not solve the things, you need a self between. With logical automata we can see clearly that the functions of computation need not be immaterial at all, and can be presented directly through 4-D material geometry. Either it violates Church thesis, and then it is very interesting, or not, and then it is a red herring for the mind-body peoblem, even if quite interesting in practical applications. In doing this, we expose the difference between computation, which is an anesthetic automatism and consciousness which is an aesthetic direct participation. In doing this, all what I see is that you eliminate the person who got a brain prosthesis. Saying that God made the human following his own image also expose a difference, but not in a quite convincing way. Logic automata proves that none of these differences are meaningful in a functionalist universe. ? That any function performed by a logical automata would be the same configuration of bricks whether we ultimately read the output as a visual experience or an auditory experience. There is a big difference between computationalism and functionalism. Comp says that functionalism is correct, at some unknown level, and in fine, this plays some role, as we cannot know which
Re: Losing Control
On Thursday, April 11, 2013 2:23:06 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 10:55 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Muscles and cells follow your intention if they receive input from conscious centres in your brain, but the cells in those centres follow the mechanistic rules that neuroscientists know and love. If that were so, then neuroscientists would not need to ask me to move my arm, they would simply predict when I think I am moving my arm. And after that they would predict the lottery numbers. So you are saying that my arm moves at random times like the lottery pays off randomly? How come I can predict when I am about to move my arm and be right every time? The lottery pays off unpredictably to an outsider, but not necessarily randomly. The lottery may itself know what its own outcome is going to be and feels that it has chosen it freely. This can be said about any process, since there is no way to know whether it is associated with consciousness or not. You didn't answer my questions. Instead you are making up an alternate universe where lotteries are not random but are intentional beings, and consciousness is an unknowable factor. In the universe where we actually live though, I can choose what time I want to stand up, and no statistical regression of ion channel behaviors is going to suggest what time that can or cannot be. I on the other hand, can predict with 100% accuracy that time will be. A top-down effect would result in things happening at the low level seemingly magically. You only think that because your world view is panmechanistic instead of panpsychic. Since we observe the ordinary top-down control of our own voluntary muscles and some mental capacities, the challenge is not to explain away this fact to preserve an arbitrary attachment to a particular cosmology, but to see that in fact, all that we see as being low and high level are defined by relativistic perception. Low and high are aesthetic perspectives, not objective realities. In reality, low and high can be discerned as separate in some sense and they are united in another sense. Of the two, Top-down is more important, since all bottom up processes are meaningless if a person is in a coma. Whether or not the scientific world view is wrong, the fact remains that a top-down effect would result in things happening at the low level SEEMINGLY MAGICALLY. Not if every low level effect was influenced by top level effects to begin with. Your argument is bizarre as it not only eliminates free will but it really eliminates the possibility of any form of living organism since cells would only ever be able to maintain their own homostasis and couldn't ever gather into a larger whole. It eliminates the possibility of powered flight, since no low level impulse of cells or molecules results in assembling airplanes. I repeat. If you think that my view requires non-physical magic, then you don't understand what I am suggesting. That isn't an opinion, it is a fact. I am defining all physical conditions of the universe from the start as the reflected consequences of experiences. Experience doesn't need to squeeze into some form or function, it is form and function which are nothing but public categories of experience. If it is all consistent with physics then it isn't a top-down effect. It is the job of physics to be consistent with reality, not the other way around. In the above sentence I am not claiming that physics is right, I am not claiming there is no top-down effect, I am just pointing out that IF IT IS ALL CONSISTENT WITH PHYSICS THEN IT ISN'T A TOP-DOWN EFFECT. If you disagree with this then explain how you think the brain could consistently follow the mechanistic rules of physics while at the same time breaking these mechanistic rules due to the top-down action of free will, because that is what you are saying, over and over and over. The same way that the keyboard allows me to send my thoughts to you, matter allows me to publicly extend my private intentions. Does the keyboard break the laws of physics? No. Does the video screen, computer, or internet break the laws of physics? No. Do I break the laws of physics? No, my public and private presence are seamless and fluidly interactive ends of the same physical-experiential process. The keyboard and screen, like the voluntary muscles of our body, exist for no other reason than to provide us with direct, voluntary access to our public environment - to control it, not just for survival, but for aesthetic preference. Again and again I bring this up and you say that I misrepresent you, that I haven't understood your theory, while it is you who have not understood the meaning of your own words. Seriously, that is your best argument? That I must not know what my own words mean since they don't
Re: The world is in the brain
On Thursday, April 11, 2013 2:38:26 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 11 Apr 2013, at 17:13, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, April 11, 2013 10:54:43 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Apr 2013, at 15:32, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, April 10, 2013 9:15:09 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 09 Apr 2013, at 20:48, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, April 8, 2013 5:38:44 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 07 Apr 2013, at 19:20, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.04.2013 19:12 meekerdb said the following: On 4/6/2013 11:54 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote: On 07.04.2013 02:40 Craig Weinberg said the following: Ok, here's my modified version of Fig 11 http://multisenserealism.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/33ost_diagram.jpg I believe that you have understood the paper wrong. The authors literally believe that the observed 3D world is geometrically speaking in the brain. Yes our 3d model of the world is in our minds (not our brains). It's not there geometrically speaking. Geometry and there are part of the model. Dog bites man. Well, if you look into the paper, you see that authors take it literally as in neuroscience mind means brain. Mind belongs to philosophy. But mind is different from brain. And mind is part of both cognitive science and theoretical computer science. To identify mind and brain is possible in some strong non computationalist theories, but such theories don't yet exist, and are only speculated about. To confuse mind and brain, is like confusing literature and ink. Neurophilophers are usually computationalist and weakly materialist, and so are basically inconsistent. If we used a logic automata type of scheme, then mind and brain would be the same thing. ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDCwrbqHfTM The Future of Computing -- Reuniting Bits and Atoms Neil Gershenfeld talking about using digital fabrication to replace digital computation. Interesting, but out of topics. Why is it off topic? It addresses exactly what we are talking about - the gap between pure function and form. By closing that gap, we can see that it makes no difference and that there is no problem to running an anesthetic program. ? It's not off topic. Each bit would be an atomic configuration, and programs would be atomic assemblies. Two apples is not the number two. With logic automata, the number two would not be necessarymatter would embody its own programs. With comp, matter relies on the numbers law, or Turing equivalent. Matter also relies on geometry, which comp cannot provide. ? Does that mean you think that comp can generate geometry, or that matter doesn't relay on geometry? Maybe this makes it easier to see why forms and functions are not the same as sensory experiences, as no pile of logic automata would inspire feelings, flavors, thoughts, etc. That is what we ask you to justify, or to assume explicitly, not to take for granted. The fact that logic automata unites form and function as a single process should show that there is no implicit aesthetic preference. A program is a functional shape whose relation with other functional shapes is defined entirely by position. There is no room for, nor plausible emergence of any kind of aesthetic differences between functions we would assume are associated with sight or sound, thought or feeling. Why? Because the function is accomplished with or without any sensory presentation beyond positions of bits. So there is some sensory presentation. In reality there would be low level sensory presentation, but without a theory of physics or computation which supports that, we should not allow it to be smuggled in. With comp you already assume the immaterial so its easier to conflate that intangible principle with sensory participation, Which conflation? On the contrary, once a machine self-refers, many usually conflated views get unconflated. The conflation is between computation and sensation. A machine has no sensation, but the parts of a machine ultimately are associated with low level sensations at the material level. It is on those low level sensory-motor interactions which high level logics can be executed, instrumentally, with no escalation of awareness. since sense can also be thought of as immaterial also. Which ease, but does not solve the things, you need a self between. Not sure how that relates, but how do you know that a self is needed? With logical automata we can see clearly that the functions of computation need not be immaterial at all, and can be presented directly through 4-D material geometry. Either it violates Church thesis, and then it is very interesting, or not, and then it is a red herring for the mind-body peoblem, even if quite interesting in
Re: Why do particles decay randomly?
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: If matter is deterministic, how could it behave in a random way? It couldn't. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Free-Will discussion
On Thursday, April 11, 2013 2:24:44 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 11 Apr 2013, at 17:28, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Thursday, April 11, 2013 11:07:01 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 10 Apr 2013, at 17:24, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Saturday, April 6, 2013 6:49:45 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Apr 2013, at 01:51, Craig Weinberg wrote: You already are aware of the relevant aspects of your brain function, and aware of them in a way which is a million times more detailed than any fMRI could ever be. No, you bet on them. You are not aware of your brain, in any direct way. Some antic believed consciousness comes from the liver. That consciousness is related to a brain is a theory, there are only evidence, we cannot experience any theory. By the same understanding that we know the brain is more likely to be the seat of consciousness than the liver, we also know that whatever we experience personally is most available impersonally as brain activity. We can manipulate brain activity magnetically and experience a change in our consciousness, when the same is not true of any other organ. This does not mean that our experience is caused by the brain or that brain characteristics can be translated into conscious qualities, but the correlation shows us that what an fMRI reveals is the correlation of events between space-time body and sensory-motor self. Far from being a map, most of the private experience is utterly opposite and unrecognizable to any of the forms or functions on the 'other side.' I was just saying that we are aware of our experience, then we built theories. Some of those theories are instinctive, other are build during early childhood, and others are brought by long histories. We are not experiencing a brain. In fact we can't according to the usual theory that there are no sensory neurons in the brain. If we are sitting inside of an airplane, it could be said that we don't 'directly experience' the airplane, as we might not be able to tell the difference, if we woke up there, between the seats on a plane and the seats on a train. If a piece of the plane fell off though, then we would be able to infer air travel. The same goes for the brain. We are only aware of it when some unexpected experience is presented. Tinnitus, vertigo, visual phosphenes, proprioceptive changes, phantom smells, etc. All of these give us direct experiences of our own neurology which are beyond theory. It's multi-layered, so that on one level we do hear a sound that sounds like it is coming from outside of our body, but on another level we can test and understand that it can't be. As much as it is quite plausible, the brain existence is theoretical. Tinnitus, vertigo, visual phosphenes, proprioceptive changes, phantom smells, etc. All of these give us *direct* experiences of tinnitus, vertigo, visual phosphenes, proprioceptive changes, and phantom smells, and provide only *indirect* evidence that, perhaps, there is a brain, in some possible reality. Each one of those however are experiences which expose the medium itself. Like a lens flare in photography, or pixelation in a video, the phenomena not only reveals a non-purposive sensory artifact, but the particular intrusive quality of the artifact actually reflects the art itself. This is what the neurological symptoms tell us - not that we have a brain and that it is real, but that there is more to our nature than to simply be a clear conduit to an objectively real universe. In this way, our senses provide us not only with simple truth, but also simple doubt which leads us to sophisticated truth, which then leads to sophisticated doubt, and finally a reconciled truth (multisense realism). Both inside and outside of the body, and the body themselves are theoretical constructs, which might have, or not, some reality, primitive or not. I'm not so big on the power of the theoretical. To me theory is only as good as the access it provides to understanding. Craig Bruno Craig Bruno Craig Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit
Re: Why do particles decay randomly?
On Thursday, April 11, 2013 3:29:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: If matter is deterministic, how could it behave in a random way? It couldn't. Are you saying then that matter is random, or that it is neither random nor deterministic? Craig John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The world is in the brain
On 4/11/2013 7:32 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 6:08 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/10/2013 2:08 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi Telmo, Yes, those are good counter examples. But I think to say pain and pleasure are fine-tuned by evolution... is a sleight of hand. Pain and pleasure are phenomenological primitives. If evolution created those primitives, how did it do that? By what mechanism? Another way to think of this is to acknowledge that pain signals are mediated by special nerves in the nervous system. But what makes those nerves any different from a nerve that carries information about gentle pressure? You may be able to point to different neuroreceptors used, but then that shifts the question to why different neuroreceptors should result in different characters of experience. You have to ground the interpretation in behavior and its relation to evolutionary advantage. People who put their hand in the fire withdraw it quickly and exclaim to warn others. People that don't suffer reproductive disadvantage. Brent Of course, but it still involves a sleight of hand. Let me offer this example by way of trying to make this clear. You have creature A which does not suffer pain. Then some mutation occurs and creature B, descended from A, is born with the ability to feel pain when exposed to fire. We agree that creature B is more likely to reproduce than creature A. My question is, what is the nature of the mutation that suddenly ushered in the subjective experience of pain? What is the mechanism? It needn't be one specific pain mechanism. It could be a part of the brain that interprets a complex of neural signals as pain, it could be release of some hormones, it could be the development of specific pain sensors. All that is significant is that it elicit the pain response. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The world is in the brain
On Thursday, April 11, 2013 5:22:47 PM UTC-4, Brent wrote: On 4/11/2013 7:32 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 6:08 PM, meekerdb meek...@verizon.netjavascript: wrote: On 4/10/2013 2:08 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi Telmo, Yes, those are good counter examples. But I think to say pain and pleasure are fine-tuned by evolution... is a sleight of hand. Pain and pleasure are phenomenological primitives. If evolution created those primitives, how did it do that? By what mechanism? Another way to think of this is to acknowledge that pain signals are mediated by special nerves in the nervous system. But what makes those nerves any different from a nerve that carries information about gentle pressure? You may be able to point to different neuroreceptors used, but then that shifts the question to why different neuroreceptors should result in different characters of experience. You have to ground the interpretation in behavior and its relation to evolutionary advantage. People who put their hand in the fire withdraw it quickly and exclaim to warn others. People that don't suffer reproductive disadvantage. Brent Of course, but it still involves a sleight of hand. Let me offer this example by way of trying to make this clear. You have creature A which does not suffer pain. Then some mutation occurs and creature B, descended from A, is born with the ability to feel pain when exposed to fire. We agree that creature B is more likely to reproduce than creature A. My question is, what is the nature of the mutation that suddenly ushered in the subjective experience of pain? What is the mechanism? It needn't be one specific pain mechanism. It could be a part of the brain that interprets a complex of neural signals as pain, it could be release of some hormones, it could be the development of specific pain sensors. All that is significant is that it elicit the pain response. That's exactly why it doesn't make sense that pain could exist at all from a mechanistic assumption. Nothing is necessary to elicit the pain response except for whatever signals engage those responses directly. You already have data, and that data can be copied or acted upon in whatever practical way is required - what possible purpose could this extra layer of pain serve, and how/where/what mechanism produces it? Craig Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The world is in the brain
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 5:22 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/11/2013 7:32 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 6:08 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/10/2013 2:08 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi Telmo, Yes, those are good counter examples. But I think to say pain and pleasure are fine-tuned by evolution... is a sleight of hand. Pain and pleasure are phenomenological primitives. If evolution created those primitives, how did it do that? By what mechanism? Another way to think of this is to acknowledge that pain signals are mediated by special nerves in the nervous system. But what makes those nerves any different from a nerve that carries information about gentle pressure? You may be able to point to different neuroreceptors used, but then that shifts the question to why different neuroreceptors should result in different characters of experience. You have to ground the interpretation in behavior and its relation to evolutionary advantage. People who put their hand in the fire withdraw it quickly and exclaim to warn others. People that don't suffer reproductive disadvantage. Brent Of course, but it still involves a sleight of hand. Let me offer this example by way of trying to make this clear. You have creature A which does not suffer pain. Then some mutation occurs and creature B, descended from A, is born with the ability to feel pain when exposed to fire. We agree that creature B is more likely to reproduce than creature A. My question is, what is the nature of the mutation that suddenly ushered in the subjective experience of pain? What is the mechanism? It needn't be one specific pain mechanism. It could be a part of the brain that interprets a complex of neural signals as pain, it could be release of some hormones, it could be the development of specific pain sensors. All that is significant is that it elicit the pain response. Brent So you would identify the subjective experience of pain with an objective description of some agent's pain response. That's no worse than my original idea I suppose, though vulnerable to the same sorts of objections... for instance, how would you account for phantom limb pain? headaches? What kind of mechanism leads to the pain experience when it is impossible to identify a pain response? Terren -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
would I win the bet after all?
Hi John, http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060410/full/news060410-2.html Nelson doesn't rule out the possibility that other psychological or spiritual factors may also play a role. I'm interested in how this experience is generated. That's as far as I take it, says Nelson. As to the ultimate meaning of these experiences, he will leave that question for others to answer. This succint report, by the way, describes a less rigorous experience than the one described in PLoS and is a bit less cautious in the final paragraph than the PLoS one. Who would have thunk? I don't like bets, by the way. I'd feel bed about losing money and I'd feel bad about taking your money. Believe it or not. Full disclosure: I had what could be considered a NDE once. Nothing supernatural about it, no lights, nothing flashing before my eyes. A friend of mine was giving me a ride home late at night and the car lost control on a tight curve. We had a frontal collision against a car on the opposite lane. Thankfully we wer both driving slow so the airbags saved everybody. I lost consciousness (maybe :) for 30 secs and woke to a strong smell of sulphur -- I imagine from the pyrotechnics that inflate the airbags. And a sore neck. The interesting part is the second before the collision. I was 100% sure I was going to die. I did not panik nor did I feel sadness or fear. I felt a calm realisation: oh, so this is how I die. It was extremely peaceful and a bit psychedelic, in that everything felt like a big cosmic joke. Not a haha funny joke, but a joke nevertheless. This has no scientific value, of course. It was an interesting 1p experience that changed my outlook on death for the best. I now consider it a strongly positive experience in my life because I fear death less. I still fear suffering though. I hope my real death turns out to be something of that sort. Cheers, Telmo. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Scientific journals
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 01:13:31PM -0400, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: Lack of importance should not be a reason. That is ridiculous. Science and Nature cannot publish every manuscript they receive and they shouldn't even if they could because that would defeat the entire point of having journals. There is only room for a few articles so the editors pick the ones out of the pile they receive every month that they judge to be the most important. I don't see what else they could do. That's rubbish. With electronic publishing, there are no resource constraints in terms of the number of articles that can be published. That is a consideration only for print journals. I can understand prioritising papers going out to peer review, based on some perceived importance, so that obvious scoops are not missed by being clogged up in the peer review pipeline. I believe they already have a fast track process to handle precisely this scenario. What is unimportant to one person, may be important to another. If you disagree with what the editors of Science or Nature judge to be important then read different journals, although I must say that historically their judgement has proven to be remarkably good; not perfect but damn good. Pretty much what I already do - though not due to any cosncious decision. The Nature articles I've actually read have been from the '70s or earlier. I have ocasionally cited more recent Nature (and even Science) articles, but mostly because I want to refer to a body of literature, and that has been how other people have cited it. Of course I do read journal articles (although I get most of my information from arXiv preprints), but they tend to be the specialty journals, not the general ones like Nature and Science. Just saying. The thing about editorial rejection is that it is based on an editor deciding that the paper is not worth looking into. Exactly, but you almost make that sound like a bad thing. Yes it is. It artificially creates a scarcity that is not there in practice. If I was the editor of the (fictitious) Journal of Bees, then I would be quite right in rejecting a paper about North Atlantic Salmon as being out of scope. Would you publish experimental results from somebody that you know has performed sloppy experiments in the past showing that bees don't make honey and never have? I'd still send it out to peer review. If its as obvious as that, it won't take very long for the peers to reject the article. Presumably, as editor, I'd feel able to be one of the peer reviewers in this case, saving the other peers :). Would you publish results from a meticulously conducted experiment that scrupulously followed the scientific method proving that if bees are dunked into a bucket of blue lead based paint they take on a blueish hue and die? OK I missed that. Obviousness of the result is probably a valid reason for rejecting an article (as it is in patents). Its different to importance though. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Losing Control
On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 5:01 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: So you are saying that my arm moves at random times like the lottery pays off randomly? How come I can predict when I am about to move my arm and be right every time? The lottery pays off unpredictably to an outsider, but not necessarily randomly. The lottery may itself know what its own outcome is going to be and feels that it has chosen it freely. This can be said about any process, since there is no way to know whether it is associated with consciousness or not. You didn't answer my questions. Instead you are making up an alternate universe where lotteries are not random but are intentional beings, and consciousness is an unknowable factor. In the universe where we actually live though, I can choose what time I want to stand up, and no statistical regression of ion channel behaviors is going to suggest what time that can or cannot be. I on the other hand, can predict with 100% accuracy that time will be. A random or deterministic being can also be intentional. You assert that it cannot and somewhat arrogantly proclaim that this is self-evident. Can you find any philosopher or scientist who agrees with you in this? Whether or not the scientific world view is wrong, the fact remains that a top-down effect would result in things happening at the low level SEEMINGLY MAGICALLY. Not if every low level effect was influenced by top level effects to begin with. If this is so then it is undetectable to science. It is like saying that Gravity is due to God pushing objects together, but done in such a way that we can never know it other than through faith. Your argument is bizarre as it not only eliminates free will but it really eliminates the possibility of any form of living organism since cells would only ever be able to maintain their own homostasis and couldn't ever gather into a larger whole. Why couldn't cells gather into a larger whole? What about all the research on cell-cell interaction? It eliminates the possibility of powered flight, since no low level impulse of cells or molecules results in assembling airplanes. The molecules or cells do not have a low level impulse. Your problem is that you cannot see that the whole can have properties not evident in its parts. I repeat. If you think that my view requires non-physical magic, then you don't understand what I am suggesting. That isn't an opinion, it is a fact. I am defining all physical conditions of the universe from the start as the reflected consequences of experiences. Experience doesn't need to squeeze into some form or function, it is form and function which are nothing but public categories of experience. You can hold this view but it is still the case that if no apparently magical effects are observable in experiment that means there is no top-down effect from consciousness. If it is all consistent with physics then it isn't a top-down effect. It is the job of physics to be consistent with reality, not the other way around. In the above sentence I am not claiming that physics is right, I am not claiming there is no top-down effect, I am just pointing out that IF IT IS ALL CONSISTENT WITH PHYSICS THEN IT ISN'T A TOP-DOWN EFFECT. If you disagree with this then explain how you think the brain could consistently follow the mechanistic rules of physics while at the same time breaking these mechanistic rules due to the top-down action of free will, because that is what you are saying, over and over and over. The same way that the keyboard allows me to send my thoughts to you, matter allows me to publicly extend my private intentions. Does the keyboard break the laws of physics? No. Does the video screen, computer, or internet break the laws of physics? No. Do I break the laws of physics? No, my public and private presence are seamless and fluidly interactive ends of the same physical-experiential process. The keyboard and screen, like the voluntary muscles of our body, exist for no other reason than to provide us with direct, voluntary access to our public environment - to control it, not just for survival, but for aesthetic preference. You are missing or deliberately avoiding the point. The keyboard would be breaking the laws of physics if the keys started moving by themselves. Similarly with the screen, computer and Internet: there is always a chain of causation behind their activity, and if this chain were broken it would appear as if the laws of physics were violated. And similarly for the brain and any biological system: there is a chain causality and if this is broken it would look like magic. See, non sequitur. I point out that if you are right chemistry is wrong, you respond with this. It appears that your new strategy is going to be to ignore all arguments and assert that you are right and I make no sense. Chemistry does not have to be wrong in order for a living
Re: would I win the bet after all?
On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 8:18 AM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: Hi John, http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060410/full/news060410-2.html Nelson doesn't rule out the possibility that other psychological or spiritual factors may also play a role. I'm interested in how this experience is generated. That's as far as I take it, says Nelson. As to the ultimate meaning of these experiences, he will leave that question for others to answer. This succint report, by the way, describes a less rigorous experience than the one described in PLoS and is a bit less cautious in the final paragraph than the PLoS one. Who would have thunk? I don't like bets, by the way. I'd feel bed about losing money and I'd feel bad about taking your money. Believe it or not. Full disclosure: I had what could be considered a NDE once. Nothing supernatural about it, no lights, nothing flashing before my eyes. A friend of mine was giving me a ride home late at night and the car lost control on a tight curve. We had a frontal collision against a car on the opposite lane. Thankfully we wer both driving slow so the airbags saved everybody. I lost consciousness (maybe :) for 30 secs and woke to a strong smell of sulphur -- I imagine from the pyrotechnics that inflate the airbags. And a sore neck. The interesting part is the second before the collision. I was 100% sure I was going to die. I did not panik nor did I feel sadness or fear. I felt a calm realisation: oh, so this is how I die. It was extremely peaceful and a bit psychedelic, in that everything felt like a big cosmic joke. Not a haha funny joke, but a joke nevertheless. This has no scientific value, of course. It was an interesting 1p experience that changed my outlook on death for the best. I now consider it a strongly positive experience in my life because I fear death less. I still fear suffering though. I hope my real death turns out to be something of that sort. Note that studying NDE's does not imply that the researchers believe they represent glimpses of God or heaven, any more than studying schizophrenia means the researchers believes the patient's delusions. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Why do particles decay randomly?
On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 5:35 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: On Thursday, April 11, 2013 3:29:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: If matter is deterministic, how could it behave in a random way? It couldn't. Are you saying then that matter is random, or that it is neither random nor deterministic? Matter behaves randomly, but probability theory allows us to make predictions about random events. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: would I win the bet after all?
On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 3:04 AM, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 8:18 AM, Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com wrote: Hi John, http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060410/full/news060410-2.html Nelson doesn't rule out the possibility that other psychological or spiritual factors may also play a role. I'm interested in how this experience is generated. That's as far as I take it, says Nelson. As to the ultimate meaning of these experiences, he will leave that question for others to answer. This succint report, by the way, describes a less rigorous experience than the one described in PLoS and is a bit less cautious in the final paragraph than the PLoS one. Who would have thunk? I don't like bets, by the way. I'd feel bed about losing money and I'd feel bad about taking your money. Believe it or not. Full disclosure: I had what could be considered a NDE once. Nothing supernatural about it, no lights, nothing flashing before my eyes. A friend of mine was giving me a ride home late at night and the car lost control on a tight curve. We had a frontal collision against a car on the opposite lane. Thankfully we wer both driving slow so the airbags saved everybody. I lost consciousness (maybe :) for 30 secs and woke to a strong smell of sulphur -- I imagine from the pyrotechnics that inflate the airbags. And a sore neck. The interesting part is the second before the collision. I was 100% sure I was going to die. I did not panik nor did I feel sadness or fear. I felt a calm realisation: oh, so this is how I die. It was extremely peaceful and a bit psychedelic, in that everything felt like a big cosmic joke. Not a haha funny joke, but a joke nevertheless. This has no scientific value, of course. It was an interesting 1p experience that changed my outlook on death for the best. I now consider it a strongly positive experience in my life because I fear death less. I still fear suffering though. I hope my real death turns out to be something of that sort. Note that studying NDE's does not imply that the researchers believe they represent glimpses of God or heaven, any more than studying schizophrenia means the researchers believes the patient's delusions. Of course. I don't believe in God or heaven either, at least not in the religious sense. I'm not implying that NDEs are a glimpse of haven, not would I bet on that hypothesis. I'm interested in them because they are an unusual state of consciousness. I have to remain agnostic on the reality status of the world as I observe it under any state of consciousness. I don't have to remain agnostic on the delusions of schizophrenics, but I would have to remain agnostic on my own delusions should I suffer from schizophrenia. Telmo. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Scientific journals
On 4/11/2013 10:15 AM, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Apr 10, 2013Richard Ruquist yann...@gmail.com mailto:yann...@gmail.com wrote: Their admissions standards have already tanked Can you give a example? Does Craig have degree? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The world is in the brain
On 4/11/2013 2:44 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 5:22 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/11/2013 7:32 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 6:08 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 4/10/2013 2:08 PM, Terren Suydam wrote: Hi Telmo, Yes, those are good counter examples. But I think to say pain and pleasure are fine-tuned by evolution... is a sleight of hand. Pain and pleasure are phenomenological primitives. If evolution created those primitives, how did it do that? By what mechanism? Another way to think of this is to acknowledge that pain signals are mediated by special nerves in the nervous system. But what makes those nerves any different from a nerve that carries information about gentle pressure? You may be able to point to different neuroreceptors used, but then that shifts the question to why different neuroreceptors should result in different characters of experience. You have to ground the interpretation in behavior and its relation to evolutionary advantage. People who put their hand in the fire withdraw it quickly and exclaim to warn others. People that don't suffer reproductive disadvantage. Brent Of course, but it still involves a sleight of hand. Let me offer this example by way of trying to make this clear. You have creature A which does not suffer pain. Then some mutation occurs and creature B, descended from A, is born with the ability to feel pain when exposed to fire. We agree that creature B is more likely to reproduce than creature A. My question is, what is the nature of the mutation that suddenly ushered in the subjective experience of pain? What is the mechanism? It needn't be one specific pain mechanism. It could be a part of the brain that interprets a complex of neural signals as pain, it could be release of some hormones, it could be the development of specific pain sensors. All that is significant is that it elicit the pain response. Brent So you would identify the subjective experience of pain with an objective description of some agent's pain response. That's no worse than my original idea I suppose, though vulnerable to the same sorts of objections... for instance, how would you account for phantom limb pain? headaches? What kind of mechanism leads to the pain experience when it is impossible to identify a pain response? Why is it impossible to identify a pain response? Don't people with phantom limb pain complain and try to alleviate it? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: would I win the bet after all?
On 4/11/2013 3:18 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: Hi John, http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060410/full/news060410-2.html Nelson doesn't rule out the possibility that other psychological or spiritual factors may also play a role. I'm interested in how this experience is generated. That's as far as I take it, says Nelson. As to the ultimate meaning of these experiences, he will leave that question for others to answer. This succint report, by the way, describes a less rigorous experience than the one described in PLoS and is a bit less cautious in the final paragraph than the PLoS one. Who would have thunk? I don't like bets, by the way. I'd feel bed about losing money and I'd feel bad about taking your money. Believe it or not. Full disclosure: I had what could be considered a NDE once. Nothing supernatural about it, no lights, nothing flashing before my eyes. A friend of mine was giving me a ride home late at night and the car lost control on a tight curve. We had a frontal collision against a car on the opposite lane. Thankfully we wer both driving slow so the airbags saved everybody. I lost consciousness (maybe :) for 30 secs and woke to a strong smell of sulphur -- I imagine from the pyrotechnics that inflate the airbags. And a sore neck. The interesting part is the second before the collision. I was 100% sure I was going to die. I did not panik nor did I feel sadness or fear. I felt a calm realisation: oh, so this is how I die. It was extremely peaceful and a bit psychedelic, in that everything felt like a big cosmic joke. Not a haha funny joke, but a joke nevertheless. Yeah, I once crashed a motorcycle at about 110mph and was thrown off the road into an orchard. I had the same experience (except I was more damaged: broke five bones in my wrist and all the ribs on the right side). Brent This has no scientific value, of course. It was an interesting 1p experience that changed my outlook on death for the best. I now consider it a strongly positive experience in my life because I fear death less. I still fear suffering though. I hope my real death turns out to be something of that sort. Cheers, Telmo. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
