From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Sat Nov 15 2003 - 04:31:14 GMT
Nathan,
> I am unclear. Do you not agree that the human brain gives meaning to
> information?
I do not agree with it, as I reject the mind/brain identity hypothesis.
>
> You look at the screen and see a white background with black markings.
This
> is information or data, is it not? The fact that you can interpret these
> symbols means that you have a functioning brain. It is your brain that
> allows you make sense out of the input from the world, no?
Why do you assume the brain is responsible? It is a part of the process, but
it cannot be the whole of the process, since the ability to merge the dots
into objects requires the transcendence of space and time, while the brain
is a spatio-temporal mechanism. A somewhat more elaborate argument can be
found below (something I posted here about a year ago). My view is that the
brain serves as a multi-dimensional metronome: keeping all the senses in
temporal synch, and not much more.
>
> Where did you study cognitive science? This is a field that I am
fascinated
> by. Do you know that work of Ramachadran? And what do you think of Steven
> Pinker?
At the University of Oregon, but I dropped out after realizing what I
describe below. The field of cognitive science is ruled by materialist
dogma, which is worse than religious dogma, since it thinks it isn't
dogmatic. I don't know the work of Ramachadran. I haven't read Pinker, but
what I've read about him sounds like he's just another materialist.
- Scott
[From an earlier post:]
Consciousness, or even sentience, *cannot*
evolve out of non-consciousness. To see the problem, take the normally
accepted view of how visual perception works: light bounces off an object,
stimulates the rods and cones in the eye, which stimulate nerve cells, and
(much complexity later) we say "I see the tree". The materialist is forced
to conclude that all that nerve cell agitation is the seeing of a tree. But
this is impossible, if one assumes that space and time are the context in
which all that is necessary to explain perception occurs.
To see this, ask how the excitation of one electron being hit by one photon
can have any *connection* to any other electron that is being, or has been
hit by another photon. For this to happen a signal must pass from the first
to the second, but that signal cannot carry any additional information than
that of a single photon. So unless we assume an electron has memory, and can
distinguish between one photon and another, there can be no greater
experience than that which an electron experiences on absorbing a photon (or
any other single interaction it can undergo, like being annihilated by a
positron.).
This argumentation applies at whatever level of granularity one tries to
think it through. One nerve cell excites others. But unless the nerve cell
itself has memory and is sentient, it cannot make distinctions or note
similarity. But how can it if it has parts (separated in space). One or more
of these parts must be responsible for holding a piece of the memory, but
then that piece has to be combined with others....
There is one out, and that is depending on quantum non-locality. But note
that doing so says that reality is fundamentally non-spatio-temporal, that
*all* spatio-temporal experience arises out of eternity. So teleology just
means causation in a different temporal direction, and Darwinism becomes
irrelevant.
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