From: Nathan Pila (pila@sympatico.ca)
Date: Tue Nov 11 2003 - 23:43:53 GMT
Steve,
I don't mind you having a laugh at my expense because I recognize the humour
in my position. It does sound quite absurd.
I recall Descartes' dictum that the ONLY thing he was positively sure of
was, that he existed and Descartes' thought held the mind of thinkers for
literally centuries. And now, here I come with some preposterous statement
that questions all of this.
But I am not putting you on or playing with you and I do sense the problem
of sunsets you refer to and the incredible feeling of getting to be a father
for the first time and the sweet taste of wine and food and sex and
etc...How is that merely chemicals and the dance of molecules?
But if I exist, where did I come from? And where do I go? And what happens
to a person who has a stroke and becomes a different person? Where did the
old one go and where did the new one come from?
And since all of my molecules are exchanged over the course of time, why
should I work hard today for somebody who I will share nothing physical with
and will exist years from now?
(The person who went through high school and university and married and had
children is not me except that I carry his memory. The cells that composed
his body have been eliminated and new cells have replaced them).
ZMM touches on these themes, doesn't it? I like the questions it raises and
like the questions you raise also.
Warmly, Nathan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Peterson" <peterson.steve@verizon.net>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 10:30 AM
Subject: Re: MD string theory
> Hi Nathan and others following this thread,
>
> Nathan said:
> > But isn't this awareness a product of the working of my brain?
> >
> > If this is the case, then isn't this awareness an illusion.
>
> Steve:
> Sometimes I start to think that the SOM demon that Pirsig and we MOQers
are
> fighting is a straw man, but here we see a living example of a person
> convinced by SOM that he himself doesn't even exist.
>
> Nathan continued:
> >That is, the
> > awareness doesn't exist except as activity of chemicals and
electrostatic
> > impulses running in the various neurons.
>
> Steve:
> ...and neurons are really just collections of molecules like any cells so
> neurons don't really exist, and molecules are simply a bunch of atoms
which
> are just some random activity of subatomic particles which most certainly
> don't really exist...so nothing exists! ;-)
>
> Nathan, the importance of "starting with experience" rather than starting
> with matter is because when starting with matter we come up with such
absurd
> conclusions as "awareness doesn't exist."
>
> Even if you do insist on thinking in terms of matter, I would argue that
> reducing everything to chemicals or molecules or atoms will never produce
a
> "Theory of Everything." You could know all there is to know about atoms
> without knowing a thing about how a tiger hunts it's prey or how a
democracy
> functions or what makes Beethoven's Ode to Joy sound so joyful.
>
> Are you playing devil's advocate to some extent or do you really not sense
a
> problem with reducing the experience of a sunset to photons striking a
> retina?
>
> Thanks,
> Steve
>
>
>
>
>
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