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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: <1994Nov22.000805.14030@egreen.wednet.edu>
Followup-To: comp.ai.philosophy
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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: Tue, 22 Nov 1994 00:08:05 GMT
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NOTA BENE:  Followups to this article have been set to 
comp.ai.philosophy, in the (perhaps mistaken) belief that the issues 
being discussed are broader than natural-language recognition.

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.
>

Ken, Ken, Ken... NOW who's arguing in circles?  You can't just assert 
that "aboutness" is an inherently immaterial quality, and then use that 
assertion as a "proof" that ideas are nonmaterial!  As I emailed you earlier:

  I am intrigued by your assertion that ideas have "aboutness".  Could you
define this term for me?  It sounds as if you're trying to say that ideas
*refer* to something--some object, concept or other idea.  But that
connection--that "aboutness"--is something that had to be created; that
is, energy had to be expended, somewhere along the line, to forge that
reference.  Thus, ideas (or references)--what I would call "information"--
obey the Second Law of Thermodynamics. 
  There is a common misconception that ideas are somehow not material; I
would think the burden of proof is on those who assert that, especially
when likely media (though perhaps not exact mechanisms) for containing
ideas are already known (e.g., human brain matter).  The misconception
seems to spring from an inadequate understanding of the entropic burden of
information:  that "CTA" and "CAT" take the same amount of energy to type,
but "CAT"  contains more of an idea ("information", in a mathematical
sense).  The fact is that the increased information content of "CAT" is
the result of a *previous* energy burden which came about when the writer
and the reader learned or were educated (which definitely takes energy!)
to understand word meanings.  The energy burden of information, therefore,
is spread out among many sources... the inventors of alphabets, the
teachers, and the students, for instance, and is less visible but
certainly not nonexistent; the Second Law of Thermodynamics is explicitly
*not* violated for information. 
  From my admittedly materialistic (though not dogmatic, I hope)
standpoint, it seems plain to me that ideas *are*, in fact, arrangements
of something; in human beings, for example, ideas exist as electrochemical
patterns in the brain.  There exist at least two forms of empirical
evidence for this; one is that creative thought causes a measurable
increase of calories burned by the active brain, more so than sleeping or,
say, watching TV.  The other is that electrical stimulation of parts of
the human brain elicits memories, sensory impressions, and in some cases
hallucinated objects (all of which I would consider "ideas" of a sort). 
Given these physical manifestations of ideas and ideation, then, as I see
it the "burden of proof" now rests on the shoulders of those who would
deny the physicality of ideas. 

Yours sincerely,

Alan P. Scott
ascott@wednet.egreen.edu

P.S.  My apologies if a form of this post shows up twice; from my end it 
*appears* that an earlier copy of my posting was swallowed before the 
whole thing made it to the group.

