On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 6:44 AM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote: >> If an experience is not 100% repeatable by repeating the presumed >> physical basis underlying it, then you are saying that there is >> something other than a physical basis to the experience. This >> something else is the mysterious non-physical entity. > > > No, I'm not saying that at all. I am saying that the idea of something > repeating is a subjective concept. No moment can be repeated. When I was > writing those words, it was a few seconds ago. In that time, the TV show on > in the background has changed, a quantity of snow has fallen in my back > yard, etc. If I say "No moment can be repeated" again, nothing as been > repeated 100%. The repetition arises from our sense to compare remembered > experiences and string them together as similar enough to be considered > identical.
If I tell you to make a copy of my copper bar which is 100mm x 100mm x10mm with a tolerance of 0.5mm at 25 degrees Celsius would you complain that you can't do it because the idea of repeating something is subjective? >> > I only get offended because you have no idea what I'm talking about, so >> > you >> > strawman it as some kind of weird idealism. Everything that I refer to >> > is >> > either Matter, Energy, Time, Space, Sense, Motive, Entropy, or >> > Significance >> > - all of which can be ultimately reduced to sense. There is nothing >> > else, >> > and I claim nothing else. >> >> Sense, motive and significance are non-physical, > > > No, they are physical, but they are private. > >> >> but the conventional >> view is that they supervene on the physical. You don't agree with >> this, so must believe that some other non-physical entity is needed. >> This would by definition be something magical, like a soul. > > > Just the opposite. It is the conventional view which requires a belief in a > magical non-physical never-never land in which our private experience takes > place. Once you realize that the conventional view is impossible, then you > can begin to look for more realistic alternatives based on the concrete > reality of experience rather than the abstract theory based on measuring > interactions of public bodies. I say that every presence is physical. > Thoughts, feelings, dreams, symbols - all physical, all physics. The > relevant distinction within physics should be private time vs public space, > not "real" vs "illusion". You can't make an immaterial soul part of physics simply by defining it as such. You say that it is impossible to duplicate a mind by duplicating the body, so the mind must not be supervenient on physical properties. >> If experience is caused by the brain and the brain is reproduced >> exactly then the experience will be reproduced exactly. > > > Experience isn't caused by the brain, any more than the internet is caused > by your computer. Reproducing your computer from 2000 won't resurrect > Napster of 2000. Nothing, and I mean nothing at all has ever been reproduced > exactly. Perhaps you could explain what you mean by "reproduce exactly". Obviously reproducing your computer from 2000 would not reproduce Napster, but reproducing the entire system of computers and users would. And in any case, we don't want to reproduce the Internet of 2000, just the computer from 2000 that will behave the same as the original computer given the same inputs, which is not very difficult to do at all. >> Bruno thinks the universe is fundamentally experiences but his view is >> consistent with science, eg. a close enough copy of an object will >> behave like the original, even if neither the copy nor the original >> have a basic physical existence. > > > Behave like the original to whom? There is no way to copy water without it > being water. If I pour sulfuric acid from a pitcher into a water glass, I > might be able to fool someone into thinking that this clear liquid is a > perfect copy, but the smell and the severe chemical burns will reveal that > the copy is actually very different in many other ways. Plants know it, even > inorganic matter will not be fooled. It's only in the visual sense that the > two liquids seem equivalent. You've never acknowledged that you understand the concept a good enough copy. All biological components have a certain engineering tolerance, for if *exact* replacements were required when parts wore out no living thing could survive more than a few moments. >> Of course they will know where they live and how to communicate with >> each other. The reason you know where you live and how to communicate >> is that your brain today is a close copy of your brain yesterday. > > > No, that's the same pre-affirmation you are smuggling in. If you can't let > go of the certainty that the public shapes of the brain define experience, > then you won't ever locate experience at all. Our brain is necessary but not > sufficient to explain human quality of consciousness, just as a TV set is > necessary but not sufficient to explain Spongebob Squarepants. We aren't > inside our brain, we are inside our lifetime. Every part of the world is sufficient to explain its own role in the system. A brain interacts with the world and creates experiences. If you reproduce a person's brain and put him in a similar environment he will have similar experiences. This is why you have similar experiences from day to day: your brain is similar and your environment is similar. If you had a head injury or if you were suddenly dropped on Mars, you would have different experiences. What's difficult to understand or controversial about that? >> If >> something goes wrong in the copying process, like a head injury, you >> might forget how to do these things. > > > There are no identical twins who are the same person, even when they share > the same body. Of course, because their brains are different and their environments are different. And even if two complex systems start off in an identical state, which is not true in the case of the twins, they diverge within moments due to chaotic effects. >> But if you copy the cells you reproduce the experience, and if you >> don't then something is missing. > > > No, you can't reproduce anything. Not a cell, not an experience. It is a > figurative term; an expectation of local consciousness that has no absolute > truth to it. A large part of human economic activity is devoted to reproducing things. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
