On Sep 4, 2:24 pm, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
> And no just to theories of consciousness. When Newton was challenged to > explain the > cause of gravity he replied, "Hypothesi non fingo". What we think of as > successful > scientific theories are ones that have descriptive and predictive power. > They don't > conform to our anthropic instinct for emotion and purpose. The whole idea of a 'successful scientific theory' is the very definition of the anthropic instinct for emotion and purpose. >It takes some scientific > training to give up the intuition that protons and weather and gravity must > have > purposes. Maybe 100 years ago it did. The idea that natural phenomena are not guided by purpose is widely understood and accepted for the most part even by young children (fundamentalists not withstanding). It's not a new an amazing concept to me, it's where we need to begin from and move beyond. >That's why I predict that the "hard problem" will just be bypassed by ever more > successful engineering of aritificial intelligence. It will be like the > question of what > causes gravity and what is life. We'll just be so dazzled by amazing new techologies so it won't matter that we have utterly failed to answer the most basic questions we have about ourselves and the universe? Yay, 'science' wins again. It's not a hard problem, it's just that we don't need to worry our heads about it because Engineering Will Provide. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
