At 12:23 AM 2/6/97 -0600, John E. Rylander wrote:
>(4) Why the emphasis on -current- physics? Because while there's no room
(I >argue, and I think you agree) for type-a consciousness in current
physics taken as >the complete explanation, conceivably there may be in
future physics (as in (3)). >But if that happens, you ask, don't we just
have the same problem all over again, >the problem of type-a consciousness
effectively being eliminated in favor of purely >physical entities? I don't
think so. Let's imagine this "type-a physics", a physics >that completely
incorporates type-a consciousness into its causality and ontology. > Is it
true that type-a consciousness is then wholly physically explicable? Yes!
>But because of the new aspects of the type-a physics, my HALlish argument
no >longer works -- complete physical explicability no longer eliminates
type-a >consciousness, it just calls the very same thing "physical".
(Perhaps there are >new particles or fields: "nouons" [from Gk "nous",
mind], or "soulons", or... :^> ) >Indeed, presumably quite the contrary:
now, given sufficient empirical knowledge >about the object in question,
we'd presumably be able to DERIVE the fact of >consciousness (or not) FROM
THIS KNOWLEDGE PLUS PHYSICAL LAWS, >without needing introspective reports.
(good thing, since maybe the object can't >speak!) Cool. And bizarre. And
utterly hypothetical, of course!
I would like to ask both you and David to consider something. I am not
advocating that the soul is due to the current laws of physics, but I can
hear my atheist friends saying something like the following:
Each nerve cell in our brain has X number of connections with other nerve
cells. Assume for the sake of argument that the number is 20. This means
that the brain could be represented as a 10 dimensional space in which each
axon. (mathematically the number of connections are related to the
dimensionality of the space by a C/2 where C is the number of connections).
What this means is that the brain is operating according to the geometric
rules of a much higher dimensionality. Considering that we have little
ability to understand the rules of a 10 dimensional object, how can you you
argue that current physics do not account for consciousness? We may not be
able to understand the way it happens but that is not the same as saying
that it can't.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm