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From: kjh@seas.smu.edu (Kenneth J. Hendrickson)
Subject: Re: Reductionist Materialism (was Re: I lie therefore I am?)
Message-ID: <1994Nov14.203936.12341@seas.smu.edu>
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References: <36e5oe$6nc@toves.cs.city.ac.uk> <39p329$kno@crl2.crl.com> <1994Nov11.210534.24348@seas.smu.edu> <fred.hegge.110.1BEA33F4@paltech.com>
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 1994 20:39:36 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai.philosophy:22043 comp.ai.neural-nets:20141 comp.ai.nat-lang:2402

In article <fred.hegge.110.1BEA33F4@paltech.com>,
fred hegge <fred.hegge@paltech.com> wrote:
>In article <1994Nov11.210534.24348@seas.smu.edu> kjh@seas.smu.edu (Kenneth J. Hendrickson) writes:
>...... However, I contest the major premise.  Ideas exist, and
>>they are not material stuff, nor the result of interactions of material
>>stuff.  .....
>
>Where do ideas exist?  Submit that if all of the physical systems in which 
>ideas are manifest, e.g., stone tablets, paper, wood, magnetic blips, patterns 
>of molecular structure and activity in brains, etc., had no existence,  there 
>wouldn't be any ideas--no one to have them, no means of recording and 
>transmitting them, and no one to receive them.  Information is surely not the 
>medium, but it surely is an arrangement of media.  The medium is necessary, 
>but not sufficient.

You beg the question.  You first assume that material stuff is all that
exists, and then assume (correctly based upon the assumption) that ideas
must exist in material media.  I will concede to you that for beings
such as humans, who have both physical and non-physical components, a
physical medium is necessary for communication of ideas.  However, while
you use your physical brain for perception, you don't use it for storing
ideas.  Ideas have ABOUTness.  It is not possible for any arrangement of
chemicals or electrical impulses to have ABOUTness.  Therefore, ideas
are not stored in the physical brain.  The mind is not the brain.  Your
assumption is wrong.

You beg the question because it is precisely materialism that is in
question.  You can't assume that materialism is true, and then use that
assumption to show that materialism is true.

>A NeoNaiveRealist

-- 
"Arguing about predestination is virtually irresistible."    --RC Sproul
Ken Hendrickson N8DGN/5           kjh@usc.edu           kjh@seas.smu.edu
