From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!dtix!darwin.sura.net!cs.ucf.edu!news Wed Sep 23 16:54:51 EDT 1992
Article 7014 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Xref: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca comp.ai.philosophy:7014 sci.physics:18370
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!dtix!darwin.sura.net!cs.ucf.edu!news
>From: clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.physics
Subject: Neo-dualism?
Message-ID: <1992Sep23.122527.8484@cs.ucf.edu>
Date: 23 Sep 92 12:25:27 GMT
Sender: news@cs.ucf.edu (News system)
Organization: University of Central Florida
Lines: 35

I came across the following passage in Dennett's _Consciousness
Explained_.  After reading it I was ready to try to start a new
school, neo-dualism, based on Bell/EPR quantum correlations.

(Dennett, op cit, page 35)
Since we don't have the faintest idea (yet) what properties
mind stuff has, we can't guess (yet) how it might be affected by
physical processes emanating somehow from the brain, so let's
ignore those upbound signals for the time being, and concentrate
on the return signals, the directives from mind to brain.  These,
ex hypothesi, are not physical; they are not light waves or sound
waves or cosmic rays or streams of subatomic particles.  No physical
energy or mass is associated with them.

Now this should ring a bell with anyone who has been following the
work in physics on Bell's inequality and quantum correlations.
In this work experiments are set up in which correlations are observed
between distant events which involve "no light waves, sound waves, 
cosmic rays, or streams of subatomic particles".   These correlations
are real, they have been observed.  

The physical catch is that no information can be transmitted via these
correlations.  Nevertheless, it would seem that one could do establish
a dualistic position based on the existence of these correlations.  
Something like: the mind realm is correlated with the physical world
and these correlations can account for the unexplained phenomena
of consciousness even though no information is exchanged.  Maybe
Liebniz was right, monads are synchronized via quantum correlations.


--
Thomas Clarke
Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central FL
12424 Research Parkway, Suite 300, Orlando, FL 32826
(407)658-5030, FAX: (407)658-5059, clarke@acme.ucf.edu


