Newsgroups: alt.atheism,alt.pagan,talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai.philosophy,alt.consciousness,alt.paranormal.channeling,alt.consciousness.mysticism
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!utnut!utgpu!pindor
From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Randomness is a human concept (was Re: Time is a human concept)
Message-ID: <CzzwG9.Iny@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <CzDKJD.FH4@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> <3auhp6$t97@mother.usf.edu> <CzqpzI.8x0@unocal.com> <3b87dp$g0c@cascade.pnw.net>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 20:48:08 GMT
Lines: 36

In article <3b87dp$g0c@cascade.pnw.net>, Don Edwards <warrl@pnw.net> wrote:
>Richard Ottolini (stgprao@st.unocal.COM) wrote:
>"In article <3auhp6$t97@mother.usf.edu>,
>"Charles Randall Yates <yatesc@babbage.csee.usf.edu> wrote:
>">Aren't all concepts human if you are an atheist?
>
>"No.  Some ideas like mathematics may be universal and discoverable by any
>"intelligence.  Universal ideas do not imply anuniversal agent that created
>"them nor are an agent themselves.  Didn't Plato say this?
>
Mathematical ideas may or may not be universal in the above sense. They may
very well be specific to the structure of our brains. Plato might have been 
wrong. After all it was his brain which told him so. His brain might have had
a delusion of grandeur :-).

>Also the periodic table of the elements.  An alien species could of
>course present the information in a slightly different way (e.g. put
>hydrogen on the right and helium on the left, as would probably
>be done by humans if the table had been figured out in a Semetic
>culture -- or with hydrogen at the top left and helium at the bottom
>left if it had been a Chinese culture); but the basic structure is 
>compelled by the information to be presented -- and if the information 
>presented is *different*, it's *wrong*.
>
Pure speculation, with no empirical support. In fact it easy to see how
wrong it could be. If the aliens based their classification on a number of
nucleons in the atomic nucleus (and why not?) then their table of elements
would look very different. And lifeforms with a lifespan very different from 
ours might see the universe in a more different way yet.

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
