Re: Why Objective Values Exist
[EMAIL PROTECTED] skrev: (7) From (3) mathematical concepts are objectively real. But there exist mathematical concepts (inifinite sets) which cannot be explained in terms of finite physical processes. How can you prove that infinite sets exists? -- Torgny Tholerus --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Why Objective Values Exist
On 28/08/07, David Nyman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What if someone simply claimed that they couldn't see how circulation was the same as cardiovascular activity: they could understand that the heart was a pump, the blood a fluid, the blood vessels conduits, but the circulatory system as a whole was something emergent and not at all obvious, in the same way that mind was emergent. Alternatively, a superintelligent being could claim that the mind was as obviously the result of brain activity as circulation was the result of cardiovascular activity. Isn't the obvious (and AFAICS unanswerable) argument against this that 'circulation' is merely a convenient shorthand for the specific set of underlying structures and processes, once these have been identified, even when this is not obvious a priori. One adds nothing *explanatorily* by applying the term to these processes, which stand by themselves for what is to be explained from the third-person perspective which fully suffices in this case. But I don't see how even a superintelligent being could convince us that first person subjective experience is by any direct analogy *explained* merely by being equated to certain third person activities of the brain, with nothing further remaining to be accounted for. IOW, even if we are inclined to accept on other grounds some sort of functional identity theory, we have made no further progress towards *explaining* the categorical uniqueness of the first person. I'm not sure what the answer is. Some philosophers like Dennett and Hofstadter claim that consciousness is simply a shorthand for the activity of certain complex systems, not immediately obvious because they are so complex. Maybe a thermostat has a protoconsciousness which is no more than a description of what a thermostat does, and it is no more possible to disentangle this quality from thermostat activity than it is possible to disentangle thermostat activity from thermostat activity. -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Why Objective Values Exist
On Aug 28, 6:31 pm, Torgny Tholerus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] skrev: (7) From (3) mathematical concepts are objectively real. But there exist mathematical concepts (inifinite sets) which cannot be explained in terms of finite physical processes. How can you prove that infinite sets exists? -- Torgny Tholerus Greg Cantor showed that they were indispensible for further progress in mathematics (See 'Cantor' or Rudy Rucker 'Infinity and the Mind' (1982). From (1) and (2) , (3) (reality of infinite sets) follows. But this is goes beyond what is necessery for the actual argument that subjective experiences are non-material. It was simply given as an example of a mathematical concept for which it is absolutely clear-cut that the concept cannot be explained in physical terms. All that is neccessery for the argument is the point made in (4) - that 'patterns' are not equivalent to specific physical properties and cannot be objectivity measured (Ray Kurzweil agrees with this conclusion - see his book). Then from the rest, the conclusion is proven subjective experiences are non-material. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Why Objective Values Exist
On 28/08/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What if someone simply claimed that they couldn't see how circulation was the same as cardiovascular activity: they could understand that the heart was a pump, the blood a fluid, the blood vessels conduits, but the circulatory system as a whole was something emergent and not at all obvious, in the same way that mind was emergent. Alternatively, a superintelligent being could claim that the mind was as obviously the result of brain activity as circulation was the result of cardiovascular activity. Alternatively a superintelligent being might be quick to castigate you for your stupidly and claim that I am right *sarcastic*. We have to look at the facts based on the information at hand, not 'what if'. You haven't answered the essential point, endorsed by one of the most respected scientists in the world, Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil is a well-known populariser, but I don't know that he deserves to be called one of the most respected scientists in the world. This point is that there's an essential difference between specific physical properties (which can be objectively measured - as in the the exmaple of circulation), and subjective experiences, which are not reducible to specific physical properties (subjective experiences are a *mathematical pattern* , and the same pattern could be enacted on anything- you could have intelligent silicon, rocks, clouds or anything. Further thesse patterns cannot be directly objectively measured. If I would only make one essential argument here it is: It's known for a fact that there exist mathematical concepts (infinite sets) which are indispensible to our explanations of reality but which can't be explained in terms of any finite physical processes. This is as clear-cut proof of the existence of non-material properties as you're ever likely to see! Mathematical concepts simply are not replaceable with physical descriptions. And subjective experiences are precisely *mathemetical patterns*. There is this sense in which the pattern is something over and above the physical substrate of its implementation. Would you say that the mind is to the brain as squareness is to a square-shaped table? -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Observer Moment = Sigma1-Sentences
Le 27-août-07, à 13:27, David Nyman a écrit :
On 16/08/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
If you drop a pen, to
compute EXACTLY what will happen in principle, you have to consider
all
comp histories in UD* (the complete development of the UD) going
through your actual state (the higher level description of it, which
exists by comp, but which is actually not knowable by you. Of course
this cannot be used in practice, but has to be used to derive the more
usable laws of physics.
I hope this will become clearer as we proceed.
I hope too. Perhaps it would help us if you could tell me which step of
the UDA you find unclear.
cf the paper:
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm
and the single summary slide PDF:
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004Slide.pdf
Normally the first seven steps should not be too much difficult.
Remember that we *assume* the comp hyp. Sometimes some people does not
understand because they (more or less unconsciously believe that I am
arguing for comp, but that is something I am never doing since a very
long time: I really take it as a working hypothesis with no (conscious)
prejudice about where this can lead us.
Empirically we can expect that the 'substitution level is more
related
to a notion of isolation than of scaling. Nevertheless, we cannot
really use this here, given that we have to extract quantum physics
from the existence of that level.
I don't understand this yet.
I guess you have some understanding of the first sentence, given that
this is something happening in any version of QM without collapse.
Sometime ago, some people argued that QM is confined to the
microscopic, and they believed that that was the reason why a
macroscopic quantum superposition (like Schroedinger's Cat) could not
exist. Today we have plenty of evidences that this is not correct, and
that it is even quite easy to generate a cat in a superposition eating
+ drinking (say). Indeed it is enough to *isolate* sufficiently well
the cat, and then to force him/her/it to choose between drinking and
eating according to the result of a measurement of a quantum
superposition state state of some local photon. By linearity the cat
will be in the superposition state. What prevent us of seeing the cat
in that superposition state is not that the cat is macroscopic but
comes from the fact that we cannot isolate the cat sufficiently well
from us, so that, very quickly we will find ourselves in a
superposition seeing the cat in such state + seeing the cat in the
orthe state. The quickly here is not due to some magical quick wave
collapse, but is due to the rapidity of the decoherence process, which
mainly describes the (linear) way superposition are contagiopus to
their neighborhood.
Now with comp, it is the same. You cannot known, by the first person
indeterminacy, which computations support your conscious state among
all computations that you cannot discerned. To make this clearer, I
will wait you telling me where exactly you have some trouble in the
UDA. OK?
The
3-brain is just not a physical device for producing consciousness, it
is a local and relative description of a state making greater the
probability that you will be able to manifest your first person
experience relatively to some dream, itself being an infinite set of
histories.
Do you mean here that: there exists a 'state that [increases] the
probability that you will be able to manifestetc.' and that the
3-brain 'is a local and relative description' of such a state?
A state by itself cannot change the probabilities. It is the relative
number of possible continuations of a state, relative to the number
of comp histories going through that state which counts, up to some
(extraordinarily complex) equivalence relation.
Can you explain why the set of all binary sequences *is* closed
for diagonalization
Because any additional members generated by diagonalisation must also
be binary sequences?
OK.
and why any *enumerable* set of binary sequences
is *not* close for diagonalization?
Because new members can always be generated by diagonalisation that go
outside the original enumerable set (as distinct from the larger set
of *all* sequences)?
OK.
A bit more difficult: can you show that for any set A, the set of
functions from A to {0,1} is bigger than A?
Could you please elucidate functions from A to {0,1} ?
I recall that *a* function (without s) from a set A to a set B, is
just any association to each member of A of a member of B, in such a
way that no element of A is associate to more than one element of B.
It is usual to describe a function by either a table of associations,
or by a graph, etc. I will represent them by the set of associations.
For example, the function FACTORIAL from N to N is represented by the
infinite set: { (0,1) (1,1) (2, 2) (3, 6) (4, 24) (5, 120) (6, 720),
...}.
I will write
Re: Why Objective Values Exist
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Aug 28, 12:53 am, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 27/08/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I accept that there is more than one way to describe reality, and I accept the concept of supervenience, but where I differ with you (stubbornly, perhaps) is over use of the word fundamental. The base property seems to me more deserving of being called fundamental than the supervenient property. If you were to give concise instructions to a god who wanted to build a copy of our world you could skip all the information about values etc. confident in the knowledge that all this extra stuff would emerge as long as the correct physical information was conveyed; whereas the converse is not the case. [If the mental does not supervene on the physical this changes the particular example, but not the general point.] Refer the brief definition of property dualism referenced by the link Bruno gave: http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/courses/mind/notes/supervenience.html Be careful to draw a distinction between 'substances' and 'properties'. I accept that the underlying *substance* is likely physical, but *properties* are what are super-imposed on the top of the underlying substance. The physical *substance* may be the base level, but the physical *properties* aren't. From the mere fact that aesthetic properties are *composed of* physical substances, it does not follow that aesthetic properties themselves are physical. Nor does it follow from the fact that physical substances are *neccessery* for aesthetic properties, that they are *sufficient* to fully specify aesthetic properties. Here's why: Complete knowledge of the physical properties of your brain cannot in fact enable you to deduce your aesthetic preferences without additional *non-physical* assumptions. That is because,as I agreed with Bruno (see my previous post), all the explanatory power of reason is *mathematical* in nature. In short, in order for you to know how a complete specification of your brain state was correlated with your aesthetic preferences, you would have to use your own *subjective experiences* as a calibrator in order to make the correlation (ie When brain state X, I feel/experience Y). And these subjective experiences are not themsleves physical, but, as I have explained again and again, *Mathematical* properties. There is this special quality of subjective experience: that which is left over after all the objective (third person knowable) information is accounted for. Nevertheless, the subjective experience can be perfectly reproduced by anyone who has at hand all the relevant third person information, even if it can't be reproduced in his own mind. You can build a bat which will to itself feel like a bat if you know every scientific detail about bats and have appropriately capable molecular assemblers at your disposal. Yes of course. But your ability to do this would not enable you to determine what the bat was actually feeling solely from the physical facts alone. So you say. I'm not so sure. (If you put matter together the right way, I agree you will be able to create consciousness, but you won't be explain what type of consciousness is created solely from physical data). So the fact that subjective experience is entirely dependent on physical substances does not provide a sufficient explanation of subjective experience. physical necessity unless you are a substance dualist, since the usual definition of supervenience says that same brain state implies same mind state. (It isn't a matter of logical necessity because property dualism is logically possible.) In this sense, the mental properties' dependence on the physical properties is asymmetrical, which is why I say the physical properties are more fundamental. You might agree with this analysis but simply have a different definition of fundamental. I agree that mental properties are depedent on the physical substance. The physical substance might be what is fundmanetal. But physical *properties* are what emerge from the movements of the underlying substance. Huh? How does gravitational mass emerge from movement? And what does emerge mean? Futher there are other non-physical properties which appear as well - mathematical for example. Is being countable a physical or a mathematical property? As I see it, mathematical and logical properties are properties of our descriptions of the things. They are desirable properties for any predictive description because they avoid self-contradiction; something that would render a prediction meaningless, but would be fine for a poem. What if someone simply claimed that they couldn't see how circulation was the same as cardiovascular activity: they could understand that the heart was a pump, the blood a fluid, the blood vessels conduits, but the circulatory system as a whole was something
Re: Observer Moment = Sigma1-Sentences
On 28/08/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you drop a pen, to compute EXACTLY what will happen in principle, you have to consider all comp histories in UD* (the complete development of the UD) going through your actual state (the higher level description of it, which exists by comp, but which is actually not knowable by you. Of course this cannot be used in practice, but has to be used to derive the more usable laws of physics. I hope this will become clearer as we proceed. I hope too. Perhaps it would help us if you could tell me which step of the UDA you find unclear. I'm sorry, I should have been clearer myself. It isn't the UDA per se that I don't find clear, but some of your specific statements and language above. For example, what specifically enables us to 'derive the usable laws of physics'? But perhaps I'm anticipating. I'm also not sure exactly what you mean by 'comp histories going through your actual state'. I think you mean that an 'actual state' (i.e. first person OM) that I'm experiencing can be attributed to any of these histories - yes? Remember that we *assume* the comp hyp. Sometimes some people does not understand because they (more or less unconsciously believe that I am arguing for comp, but that is something I am never doing since a very long time: I really take it as a working hypothesis with no (conscious) prejudice about where this can lead us. Yes, I accepted this a while back. By linearity the cat will be in the superposition state. What prevent us of seeing the cat in that superposition state is not that the cat is macroscopic but comes from the fact that we cannot isolate the cat sufficiently well from us, so that, very quickly we will find ourselves in a superposition seeing the cat in such state + seeing the cat in the orthe state. The quickly here is not due to some magical quick wave collapse, but is due to the rapidity of the decoherence process, which mainly describes the (linear) way superposition are contagiopus to their neighborhood. OK, so 'the cat' quickly becomes us + the cat in two orthogonal states? BTW, I've never seen the cat referred to as a 'contagio-puss' before, but it might catch on! Now with comp, it is the same. You cannot known, by the first person indeterminacy, which computations support your conscious state among all computations that you cannot discerned. To make this clearer, I will wait you telling me where exactly you have some trouble in the UDA. OK? I think this is what I intended above - i.e. the UD* entails computations that support both versions of 'me' + the cat; which one I experience in a given OM is indeterminate. A state by itself cannot change the probabilities. It is the relative number of possible continuations of a state, relative to the number of comp histories going through that state which counts, up to some (extraordinarily complex) equivalence relation. Are you still talking about the equivalence relation between the mind and the brain? I'm sorry to be so picky, but I'm really trying to be sure I understand each sentence. Can you compute how many functions from A to B there are, in case A has n elements and B has m elements? Answer: m^n. Can you see that? Yes, I can see it now I understand the notation better. By proof here, I mean an argument which convinces you, or better, an argument which you have the feeling that it can be used to convince your little sister (which I suppose not to be a mathematician). In fact I have two little sisters (and one little brother), and none are mathematicians. David Le 27-août-07, à 13:27, David Nyman a écrit : On 16/08/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you drop a pen, to compute EXACTLY what will happen in principle, you have to consider all comp histories in UD* (the complete development of the UD) going through your actual state (the higher level description of it, which exists by comp, but which is actually not knowable by you. Of course this cannot be used in practice, but has to be used to derive the more usable laws of physics. I hope this will become clearer as we proceed. I hope too. Perhaps it would help us if you could tell me which step of the UDA you find unclear. cf the paper: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm and the single summary slide PDF: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004Slide.pdf Normally the first seven steps should not be too much difficult. Remember that we *assume* the comp hyp. Sometimes some people does not understand because they (more or less unconsciously believe that I am arguing for comp, but that is something I am never doing since a very long time: I really take it as a working hypothesis with no (conscious) prejudice about where this can lead us. Empirically we can expect that the 'substitution level is more related to a notion of isolation than of
Re: Why Objective Values Exist
On Aug 29, 4:20 am, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks for spelling it out. (1) Mathematical concepts are indispensible to our explanations of reality. So are grammatical concepts. No they aren't. Grammatical concepts are human creations, which is precisely shown by the fact that they *can* be dispensed with and replaced with scientific concepts which give a more accurate description of reality. What does it mean for a concept to be real? I don't find the argument from indispenability convincing. It's like saying because we don't know how to describe something without words, the words are real things. Not really. According Deutsch's 'Critera For Reality' (ref: 'The Fabric Of Reality', David Deutsch) , an application of occam's razor says that something should be considered to 'objectively exist' if taking the concept out of our theory made the explanation more complex or impossible. (ie the concept can't be dispensed with without complications). Grammer doesn't match the criteria. Math does. It's easy to cut out English concepts say, and replace them with other modes of descriptions. I don't see scientists labriously trying refactor all their mathematical explanations to refer only to material observables. It's not even possible. And that's why mathematical concepts should be taken to be objectively real. And patterns cannot be objectively measured in the way that specific physical properties can (See Ray Kurweil 'The Singularity Is Near' for agreement of this). Appeal to authority? No, a reference to a more detailed explanation of the point (so I don't have to laboriously type the argument here). I don't think anyone ever doubted that subjective experiences are processes - and in that sense non-material. But that doesn't show that they can exist apart from the material. Or that the existence and evolution of the process cannot be elucidated by purely material descriptions. I could as well observe that all patterns of any kind are instantiated in material. Brent Meeker Indeed all scientific evidence indicates that subjective experiences are entirely dependent on the material. Be careful to respond only to what I actually said rather than what you thought I said. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Why Objective Values Exist
On Aug 29, 4:03 am, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
There is this special quality of subjective experience: that which is
left over after all the objective (third person knowable) information
is accounted for. Nevertheless, the subjective experience can be
perfectly reproduced by anyone who has at hand all the relevant third
person information, even if it can't be reproduced in his own mind.
You can build a bat which will to itself feel like a bat if you know
every scientific detail about bats and have appropriately capable
molecular assemblers at your disposal.
Yes of course. But your ability to do this would not enable you to
determine what the bat was actually feeling solely from the physical
facts alone.
So you say. I'm not so sure.
Go back to our previous discussions. A complete material description
of something cannot be mapped to subjective experiences without using
knowledge about subjective experience. If you know that neurons X are
firing in way Y, for sure, the subjective experience is entirely
dependent on this process, but how do you know what subjective
experience this material process is actually causing? You can't know
without having knowledge of the *correlation* (mapping) between the
material procceses and subjective experience. And in using knowledge
of this correlation, you would be slipping in references to subjective
experience in your explanations. ('cheating' as it were).
I agree that mental properties are depedent on the physical
substance. The physical substance might be what is fundmanetal. But
physical *properties* are what emerge from the movements of the
underlying substance.
Huh? How does gravitational mass emerge from movement? And what does
emerge mean?
mass appears to be intrinsic to a physical thing itself (ie
*substance*), not a property resulting from physical processes.
'Emerge' simply means that properties are not intrinsic but are a
result of physical interactions and processes.
Futher there are other non-physical properties
which appear as well - mathematical for example.
Is being countable a physical or a mathematical property? As I see it,
mathematical and logical properties are properties of our descriptions of
the things. They are desirable properties for any predictive description
because they avoid self-contradiction; something that would render a
prediction meaningless, but would be fine for a poem.
being countable is of course of a mathematical property. And your
point here is at the heart of our disagreement. Because of the
argument from indispensability, I *don't* think that mathematical
properties are properties of our *descriptions* of the things. I
think they are properties *of the thing itself*. Some kinds of
description (ie mathematical concepts) can't be dispensed with in our
explanations of reality. Therefore the simplest explanations is that
these concepts exist objectively.
This point is that
there's an essential difference between specific physical properties
(which can be objectively measured - as in the the exmaple of
circulation), and subjective experiences, which are not reducible to
specific physical properties
You keep asserting that, but exactly the same thing was said about life.
Yes, but I can explain exactly what the difference is in the case of
mind/brain. Mental properties are mathematical patterns. Physical
properties are not.
(subjective experiences are a
*mathematical pattern* , and the same pattern could be enacted on
anything- you could have intelligent silicon, rocks, clouds or
anything. Further thesse patterns cannot be directly objectively
measured.
Why can't such patterns be measured? If I create an intelligent computer,
why can't I follow it's operation?
You *can* measure the physical correlates of these patterns. But the
point that I (and David) had been making that the physical correlates
of these patterns are not the mathematical pattern (ie the mental
process) itself.
If I would only make one essential argument here it is:
It's known for a fact that there exist mathematical concepts (infinite
sets) which are indispensible to our explanations of reality but which
can't be explained in terms of any finite physical processes.
I don't think so. Infinities in physical theories are just convenient
approximations for something very big.
Brent Meeker
I would carefully read Rudy Rucker's 'book of Infinity. It is a
through rebutting of the idea that 'inifinites in physical theories
are just conveient approximations'. The whole of cantor's set theory
simply doesn't work without assuming that the infinities are things in
themselves. There is more than one kind of infinity.
It all comes down to perspective. The attempt to reduce everything to
material concepts would severely limit science. In fact most of
computer science couldn't be done. computer scientists don't talk in
Re: Why Objective Values Exist
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Aug 29, 4:20 am, Brent Meeker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks for spelling it out. (1) Mathematical concepts are indispensible to our explanations of reality. So are grammatical concepts. No they aren't. Grammatical concepts are human creations, which is precisely shown by the fact that they *can* be dispensed with and replaced with scientific concepts which give a more accurate description of reality. So are mathematics human creations (c.f. William S. Cooper, The Evolution of Logic). There is no sharp distinction between what is expressed in words and what is expressed in mathematical symbols. Darwins theory of evolution is no more accurately expressed in mathematical notation. What does it mean for a concept to be real? I don't find the argument from indispenability convincing. It's like saying because we don't know how to describe something without words, the words are real things. Not really. According Deutsch's 'Critera For Reality' (ref: 'The Fabric Of Reality', David Deutsch) , an application of occam's razor says that something should be considered to 'objectively exist' if taking the concept out of our theory made the explanation more complex or impossible. (ie the concept can't be dispensed with without complications). So Deutsch has an overly generous criterion for exist. Does he consider epicycles real because they were indispensable to Ptolemy's theory of the cosmos. I'd go with Dr. Johnson - it exists if I kick it and it kicks back. Grammer doesn't match the criteria. Math does. It's easy to cut out English concepts say, and replace them with other modes of descriptions. I don't see scientists labriously trying refactor all their mathematical explanations to refer only to material observables. Actually a theory that dispenses with unobservables is usually considered preferable, by application of Occam's razor. For example in Newtonian mechanics force was an important concept, but later it was dropped. So what is it's status now? It's still a mathematical concept - but according to Deutsch it's not part of reality. It's not even possible. And that's why mathematical concepts should be taken to be objectively real. Your argument, even if I agreed with it, would only justify counting as objectively real those mathematical concepts that appear in a true theory of reality - and unfortunately we never know which one that is. Brent Meeker And patterns cannot be objectively measured in the way that specific physical properties can (See Ray Kurweil 'The Singularity Is Near' for agreement of this). Appeal to authority? No, a reference to a more detailed explanation of the point (so I don't have to laboriously type the argument here). I don't think anyone ever doubted that subjective experiences are processes - and in that sense non-material. But that doesn't show that they can exist apart from the material. Or that the existence and evolution of the process cannot be elucidated by purely material descriptions. I could as well observe that all patterns of any kind are instantiated in material. Brent Meeker Indeed all scientific evidence indicates that subjective experiences are entirely dependent on the material. Be careful to respond only to what I actually said rather than what you thought I said. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
