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From: ascott@egreen.iclnet.org (Alan Scott - CIR)
Subject: Re: Reductionist Materialism (was Re: I lie therefore I am?)
Message-ID: <1994Nov21.201901.7479@egreen.wednet.edu>
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References: <36e5oe$6nc@toves.cs.city.ac.uk> <1994Nov14.203936.12341@seas.smu.edu> <3aapim$hve@gap.cco.caltech.edu> <1994Nov17.223604.5833@seas.smu.edu>
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 1994 20:19:01 GMT
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In article <1994Nov17.223604.5833@seas.smu.edu>,
Kenneth J. Hendrickson <kjh@seas.smu.edu> wrote:
>In article <3aapim$hve@gap.cco.caltech.edu>,
>Kevin A. Archie <karchie@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:
>>kjh@seas.smu.edu (Kenneth J. Hendrickson) writes:
>>>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.
>>
>>What quality of ABOUTness does a representation of an idea in a
>>physical medium fail to capture?
>
>ABOUTness *is* a quality.  My claim is that ideas inherently have this
>quality, and no arrangement of physical stuff inherently has this
>quality.  You might claim that some arrangement of physical stuff (the
>magnetic fields on your disk containing this message) has the quality of
>ABOUTness; this however is not true.  It is only when you bring an
>interpretation, from outside the arrangement of physical stuff, to the
>arrangement of physical stuff, that ABOUTness is present.  ABOUTness is
>not an integral quality of the arrangement of physical stuff, intrinsic
>to the stuff or the arrangement thereof, the way that mass is an
>integral quality of physical stuff.  Ideas intrinsically have the
>integral quality of ABOUTness.  Physical stuff doesn't, and can't.
>
>-- 
>"Arguing about predestination is virtually irresistible."    --RC Sproul
>Ken Hendrickson N8DGN/5           kjh@usc.edu           kjh@seas.smu.edu


