Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: > > Not even Smullyan's "The Tao is Silent"?.
Religion requires dogma about the nature of reality, and Smullyan didn't have any of that and neither does Taoism and neither do I. Instead Taoism and Smullyan taught that that certain mental exercises can sometimes make some people happier, and they are unlikely to make them unhappier. I think that could very well be true. And Smullyan never said mystical experiences couldn't happen but he did say talking about them is pointless. Iv'e never had a mystical experience but if I ever do I intend to keep my mouth shut about it. Perhaps by direct experience I have found something new about the world but direct experience can not be communicated, although that hasn't stopped self described mystics from writing millions of words of turgid prose in a attempt to do just that. And there is another possibility, perhaps I didn't have a mystical experience at all, maybe I just had indigestion. As Ebenezer Scrooge said to the ghost in A Christmas Carol: “*You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you*" > and I urge you to read the book by Daniel J. Cohen Is that the book you recommended before, the book that can perform calculations? >> a mind needs a brain. > > > It needs an infinity of computations. There is no evidence a mind needs a infinity of calculations, and we know for a fact computers can only perform a finite number of calculations and yet they are starting to behave as if they had a mind. >The brain is only a local map of the locally accessible computational > continuation. If the brain is only the map and mind is the territory then changing the map won't change the territory, but changing the brain *does* change the mind. So something does not compute. >> And a brain needs matter that obeys the laws of physics. > > > This explanation becomes circular, if invoked in the course of solving > the mind-body problem. A mind needs calculations, calculations been a brain, a brain needs matter that obeys the laws of physics, and matter that obeys the laws of physics does NOT need a mind. What's circular about that? > To use observation as a criterion of truth is the "aristotelian act of > faith". Screw Aristotle, his contempt for observation stopped science from advancing for 2000 years! > this simply stop to work (but you need to get quite beyond step 3 to > appreciate this, Step 3 of what? it's certainly not a proof, not only did it fail to prove anything I don't think you had a clear vision of what you were even trying to prove. > The observation is quite important, and can make some theory quite > unplausible, but it is not the criterion of truth, which for a platonist Screw Plato. > I am not sure if your theory (in metaphysics) is testable. Change the brain and the mind changes. Change the mind and the brain chances. It's testable and it passes the test. The mind body problem is no deeper than the difference between "is" and "does". That is a race car, what that does is go fast. That is a brain, what it does is mind. > you assume a physical universe. I assume that "physical" means stuff that continues to exist even if nobody believes in it. I am certain the moon exists even if nobody is looking at it, but I am far less certain pi would exist if there were no intelligent beings to think about it, and Turing's non-computable numbers (the vast majority of the Real numbers) I find even more problematic. John K Clark -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
