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From: forman@netcom.com (frank forman)
Subject: Re: Open Letter to Professor Penrose
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Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 20:28:18 GMT
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RussBe (russbe@aol.com) wrote:
: On reading Frank Forman's Wed, 27 Dec 1995 16:45:24 post and subsequent
: postings the following phrases jerked these thoughts from the mysterious
: matrix we call mind.

: Frank said
: << We should also realize that
: there is no "mind" apart from matter and that
: our brains will be better and better explained.
: One principle reason for accepting an
: evolutionary and neurological approach toward
: consciousness is to avoid writing thick,
: densely-argued tomes denying its reality. Nor
: should we write other tomes saying that
: consciousness is inherently unexplainable if not
: spiritual. >>

: These thoughts ask for a reversal in thinking...
: Consider the concept that "matter can be neither 
: created or destroyed" as an argument against 
: the existence of matter. 

I would not put it past a philosopher to make an
argument of this sort! 

:                          If thick tomes have to be 
: written to deny the reality of consciousness, this 
: may mean no valid argument can be developed--
: likewise for the proposition that consciousness is 
: inherently unexplainable if not spiritual.

Do you mean a valid argument for or against the reality
of consciousness?

:                                     After all, 
: "matter" and "spiritual" are words that only symbolize 
: our limited perception of phenomena.

Well, we certainly hope that our words and concepts 
correspond with something "out there". I go along with
the great Charles Peirce and his
"pragmaticism," which says that concepts and ideas are
true, or valid, to the extent they provide useful
ingredients in a scientific theory. Thus, the old
concept of carbon as something hard, black, lightweight,
and therefore *not* a diamond gets replaced with the
new (and still current) concept of carbon as atomic
element no. 6. (Ayn Rand said new concepts always 
refine old ones: this is a counterexample.) What Peirce
did was to reject both essentialism (definitions are
eternal) and nominalism (definitions are wholly
arbitrary). 

Sometime I have got to argue that
essentialism was characteristic of Classical
civilization, nominalism of Western civilization 
(which died 1859 November 25), and that Peirce was
the first great philosopher of Darwinian civilization,
in which we are now living. The characteristic
mathematics of these civilizations are geometry.
calculus, and topology. 

:                                        What is the 
: possibility that matter exists because it is a concept, 
: and that the mind, whatever its consciousness, sub-
: conscious and conscious really are and its medium 
: really is, is the source, not the end product? It seems 
: that thoughts in the form of ideas can transform 
: matter. Is the reverse true? The algorithm is either 
: fuzzy or complex to allow such diverse associations. 
: Does it allow reversal?

There is in fact a FABULOUS  possibility that *my* mind 
is just a brain in a vat. This possibility needs only
the trivial assumption that nanotechnology will progress
to the point where my brain can be simulated in a computer
such that I will have a full set of imagined experiences
of an external world. As the cost of these brains in vats
decreases, then more and more brains will be just these
vats (or rather chips in computers) and not the brains
that are embodied in carbon-based organisms that we know
today. [[YOU JUST *THINK* YOU KNOW THIS!!--The Internet
Monster]] And since the Earth is relatively young as 
planets go, this nanotechnological process is likely to
have been achieved long, long ago.

But the odd thing is: it seems that matter had to go
the carbon route to produce the intelligence to make
the computers in which minds can be placed. [[YOU
CARBON CHAUVINIST PIG!!]] I insist on this, even if
*ultimately* matter that can perform calculations
can be more tightly packed in silicon chips than in
anything carbon, the kind of silicon used to do this
is many, many times more pure than any silicon to be
found lying around in sand dunes. It takes intelligent
animals [[LIKE YOU, I SUPPOSE!!]] to do all this
refining and manufacturing. (I realize that the 
superiority of silicon has been recently challenged
by the prospect of using blobs of DNA to do massive
pparallel processing, but the point still stands: it
takes intelligence to make the blobs of DNA do
the sort of computing I am speaking of.) As far as
we know, carbon is the only element that is able,
under conditions existing before intelligent life
forms come along, to combine with enough other 
elements in ways complex enough to *evolve* life
and therefore intelligent life.

Anyhow, there is an external world, even if the 
external world that *I*, as a brain in a vat,
apprehend is all a pre-programmed illusion.

: Just perverse thoughts on what doesn't compute with me: I don't expect a
: response.

Well, you got one, and I hope to see you
outcompete me in the perversity department!

Frank
