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From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: The physical basis of consciousness
Message-ID: <DpyMAM.M03@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <Pine.A32.3.91.960414180823.60749A-100000@green.weeg.uiowa.edu> <4kso38$q4j@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
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Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 14:44:45 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:38260 comp.ai.philosophy:40110 sci.cognitive:12402 sci.philosophy.meta:26730 sci.logic:17847

In article <4kso38$q4j@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, Den1P <den1p@aol.com> wrote:
...................................
>4. The claims of reductionism in general are unscientific because quantum
>inderminism and chaotic phenomena create null-zones for prediction, and
>hence such claims are unfalsifiable.  The laws are what the equations say
>they are and not what BJF's cultural mythology hoped they would be. 
>Nature has excused fundamental phyics from some realms of application,
>which are its null-zones.  Since the brain has certain known dynamical
>regimes of chaotic operation, a complete theory of mind must include at
>least some of these null-zones.

While I fully agree with your assesment of the "theory" you criticise, I'd
like to point out that although it is true that indeterminism and chaos 
create null-zones for _single event_ predictions, situation is not as hopeless
for reductionism as might seem from the above. We still can make and test 
predictions for a distribution of inputs - into what distribution of outputs
they will be transformed. In other words we still can make statistical
predictions. Science has not yet fully absorbed a need for this new attitude
(I do not claim originality here, first time I have heard this opinon voiced
by Priggogine - he talks about a radically new paradigm).

Andrzej
>5. The aledged isomophism of visual qualia and the photon field via a
>mutual vertor representation is simply false.  First, because the photon
>field is not strictly linear, and second because the visual field is
>non-local, exhibits hysteresis effects, and is non-linear in a different
>way than the photon field.
>6. If the isomorphism were true, the assumptions of BJF's theory would not
>be consilient with the basic assumptions of either Kuluza-Klein theory or
>Super-String theory.  Neither would it be of use in furthering our
>understanding of visual qualia or othe psychological phenomena to see them
>as refecting extra dimensions in the space-time manifold.
>
>  All of these objections are apparently beyond BJF's meagre intellectual
>capacity.  So, he responds with pettyfogging pedantry and second-rate
>sarcasm. Maybe one of his authorities will help him with some pithy
>quotation, since he is obviously in over his head.
>
>Dennis Polis


-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Information Commons                   what they think and not what they see.
pindor@breeze.hprc.utoronto.ca                      Huang Po
