----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen A. Lawrence" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2007 6:57 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Re: WAY_OT: The Mindless crap shoot of evolution
> Michel Jullian wrote: >> But could our mind possibly be open to the idea that like paramecia we are >> machines, only with >> more computing power? We couldn't possibly cope with this thought could we? >> We would have to >> resort to a ghost in the machine, or even a deus in the machina... >> > > Nonsense; I've had exactly that argument over lunch with a friend who was > convinced of it. We can > conceive it, we can admit the possibility, and we can debate whether it makes > sense. I don't > think it does, but some people disagree with me. > > By a "ghost" I merely meant that which is aware; "awareness" is something > which is not part of > current physical theory, so it seems reasonable to call it by an > extraphysical term. Hmmm, I don't see why awareness would require a new physical concept, which would have to be artificially installed somewhere between the paramecium and the dog. Awareness could be simply enough computing power to sort out what the senses sense. > The problem with what you say above is that you're getting into issues as > deep as the basic rules > of inference here. As I said, the bottom of the slope is Total Confusion, > not simple Nihilism. > Something I encountered with surprise when I first studied logic is that the > primary rule of > inference: > > (A => B) & A => B > > is an assumption, not a theorem. In fact, there's very little in logic which > doesn't turn out to > be an assumption. These fundamental assumptions appear to be inarguable to > us -- but that only > really shows that we can't imagine how they could be incorrect. That > statement is subtly but > significantly different from the statement that they cannot be incorrect. > > Descarte's "cogito ergo sum" appears at first glance to be airtight -- > until we realize that what it really says is, I experience consciousness, and > given that fact, I > cannot see any way that I could not exist. I.e., I cannot see any way that > *nothing* could be > conscious. That is, again, not /exactly/ the same as saying, "To be > conscious, one must exist". > If, on the other hand, we take the usual rules of inference as givens, and we > take Descarte's > notion at face value, then we are confronted with the fact that /something/ > is aware of its > surroundings IMHO face value is simply that something that thinks necessarily exists, in principle one could think without any surroundings. > -- or at least, I am so confronted; I can't say whether you are too! :-) I am too, at times :) But I don't see this as a big feat, ants and even plants seem to be aware of their surroundings. > Unfortunately, that is as far as we can take it while retaining any > semblance of deductive > validity. (Descarte's subsequent arguments, from which he concluded that > things are as they > appear, were ill-founded.) > > So, then, we can ask what it means to be "conscious", and we can get > embroiled in slippery > arguments about it; but no matter what we conclude we won't be able to argue > our way out of the > possibility that we're stuck in a virtual reality version of the Matrix and > just don't recall > pressing the start button. Of course this is a possibility, but we could simply be matrixes ourselves, part of a larger matrix, happily obeying the laws of Nature, why not? If we were discussing life on earth from outside, with what we know about biology, neurones etc, would we think twice before dismissing any ghost in the machine? Michel
