While the comments made here make interesting and amusing reading the underlying rationale of COMP as an attempt to resolve the mind-body problem which worried earlier philosophers is, in my view fatally flawed. Here are some of the main reasons:
1. There is no longer a "mind-body problem". Objective current understandings of physics, chemistry and biology easily dispel the mystical notions previously associated with consciousness. As long as we take care to avoid the trap of introspection with its attendant self-referential recursive loops we can now see that this feature, which happens to be greatly hypertrophied in our species, is merely an extension and enhancement of the navigational facility seen in most animals. The degree of sophistication being a result natural selection to permit optimal interaction of the organism with its environment. Which in our case, of course is extraordinarily high. 2. The language of mathematics has evolved to handle more efficiently the relatively simple situations not requiring the high levels of abstraction found in the natural languages. The latter are, for the most part, more appropriate for complex disciplines such as chemistry and particularly biology. A tree, for instance, or a cell, defies mathematical description. Only for the simpler aspects of these disciplines does mathematics play a minor (but nevertheless valuable part) as an adjunct. For this reason, mathematics would not be a good contender for the solution of the "mind-body problem" even if it still had any significance. 3. Even in those areas where mathematics is most valuable we must bear in mind that, like all languages, it is capable of generating fictions. Most importantly, of the multitudinous mathematical models that can be envisaged, only a small subset correspond to empirical reality. For example, any number of dimensions can be handled within mathematics yet only the three of space and one of time have, as yet, been observed. Science has found no straight lines or points in our universe. It is the failure to recognize these inherent limitations which, to me, appear to inspire much of the contention in the above discussions of this topic. A treatment of consciousness and related issues is provided within the context of a broad evolutionary model which extends beyond biology in: "The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?" (free download in e-book formats from the "Unusual Perspectives" website) -- 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.
