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From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Why scientists popularize premature speculations?
Message-ID: <D0CorF.I4t@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <3bd8s0$1q2@pobox.csc.fi> <JMC.94Nov301703
 39@white.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il> <MATT.94Nov30113507@physics10.berkeley.edu> <JMC.94Dec3140227@white.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il>
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Date: Mon, 5 Dec 1994 18:30:51 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.skeptic:97191 sci.psychology:30988 sci.physics:102419 sci.philosophy.meta:15309 sci.bio:23710 comp.ai.philosophy:23171

In article <JMC.94Dec3140227@white.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il>,
McCarthy John <jmc@white.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il> wrote:
>I would have regarded Crick's hypothesis - that consciousness is to be
>investigated by the same scientific methods as are applied to every
>other question - as not astonishing.  He writes, with some
>justification, that consciousness is regarded by many (perhaps most)
>people including scientists as not susceptible to ordinary scientific
>investigation.  I can imagine that the books was written as a
>straightforward popularization of Crick's ideas about consciousness
>and that the publisher got him to put a little hype in about applying
>ordinary scientific methods being astonishing.
>
>Well perhaps making the ideas available to people with an interest
>requires making it attractive to people who will use it mainly as a
>decoration.  I guess that considering it as decorative also applies
>to the editors of book review sections of newspapers and magazines.
>
The problem here is that consciousness is unlike other problems to which we
apply scientific methods. Scientific methods are applied to the world
reaching us through our senses whereas consciousnes is a phenomenon about
which we have knowledge without senses - we _know_ that we are conscious,
without involving sight, hearing, etc. Hence I doubt if scientific method is
suitable to studying consciousness understood this way.

Andrzej

-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Instructional and Research Computing  what they think and not what they see.
pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca                           Huang Po
