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From: kjh@seas.smu.edu (Kenneth J. Hendrickson)
Subject: Re: Reductionist Materialism (was Re: I lie therefore I am?)
Message-ID: <1994Nov17.223604.5833@seas.smu.edu>
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References: <36e5oe$6nc@toves.cs.city.ac.uk> <fred.hegge.110.1BEA33F4@paltech.com> <1994Nov14.203936.12341@seas.smu.edu> <3aapim$hve@gap.cco.caltech.edu>
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 1994 22:36:04 GMT
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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.

-- 
"Arguing about predestination is virtually irresistible."    --RC Sproul
Ken Hendrickson N8DGN/5           kjh@usc.edu           kjh@seas.smu.edu
