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From: hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu (H. M. Hubey)
Subject: Re: Penrose's Matter = Mental Substance?
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Date: Mon, 31 Oct 1994 23:35:36 GMT
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colby@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Kenneth Colby) writes:

>   
>   It is noteworthy that three leading quantum physicists have
>   stated there is something mental about matter - Wheeler (the
>   it comes from the bit), Bohm (mind and matter are in a particapatory
>   relation in active information) and now Penrose:
>      "I think that matter itself is now much more of a mental
>       substance ... because matter is rooted in mathematics which
>       we think of as mental constructs."

It would be just as easy to describe all this without having any
recourse to the word "mental".  For example, the fact that we see
things that affect us is as simple as all modeling in  the physical
sciences--input, black box, output.  Photons enter the eye, have 
an effect on the receptors, they affect the neurons, and so on..
until finally... we seem to think that "just looking" produces
a physical effect. "Just looking" is "information gathering" and it
is done via photons.  You cannot get anything for nothing. Even
Yogi Berra knew it :-);  

"You can observe a lot just by watching."
			Yogi Berra.



--
						-- Mark---
....we must realize that the infinite in the sense of an infinite totality, 
where we still find it used in deductive methods, is an illusion. Hilbert,1925
