John Shop <quack...@outlook.com> wrote: All the advances that have been made are ones which can be imagined and > achieved with sufficiently advanced technology. However AFAIK all of our > great minds have so far failed to come to grips with consciousness and some > (eg Penrose) have demonstrated that human minds at least can do what no > computable algorithms can do. >
Consciousness is a problem of biology. There are many problems in biology which people previously declared could never be solved, even in principle, yet which were later solved. The best example is cellular reproduction and the genetic blueprint for an entire plant or animal in a single cell. Before 1952, even some biologists thought this was an ineffable mystery forever beyond the mind of man. It turned out to be relatively simple. Progress has been made in understanding consciousness. The fact that we do not yet fully understand it is no reason to think we will never understand it. > When our best minds can't even imagine how something might be done given > any imaginable computing ability, and there appears to be proof that > conciousness can do the non-computable . . . > Our best minds could not imagine how cellular reproduction worked before the discovery of DNA. As I said, it turned out to be rather simple in principle. Before Pasteur, the best minds and best educated people had no idea what caused infectious disease, or fermentation in wine. It turned out to be remarkably simple. Consciousness may also have a simple mechanism. If we figure it out, it might be something that any high school kid understands as well as she understands how bacteria cause disease. A mystery in one era is prosaic common knowledge in the next. We are surrounded by technology that would be "indistinguishable from magic" to people in 1800. Look at things such as cell phones, computers, the GPS or a thermonuclear bomb. Not only would those people have no clue how these things work, they could not have imagined that such things can even exist. In any case in order to achieve the telepathic ability that seems to > regularly occur between consiousnesses . . . > Telepathy does not exist, as far as I know. If it does exist, I am sure there is a naturalistic explanation for it. There are many astounding biological phenomena presently unexplained, such as coral reef spawning. This strikes me as even more astounding than telepathy would be if it were real. But there is no indication that any of these confirmed real phenomena are supernatural. The fact is that almost every educated and intelligent person would regard > telepathy as supernatural . . . > First, I regard it as mythical, not supernatural. There is no solid evidence for it. Second, I am sure that if does exist, it is natural, because so many other things people used to think are supernatural or inexplicable turned out to be explicable. - Jed
