From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Wed Jan 28 2004 - 01:34:52 GMT
Hi DM,
> Steve:
> To infer patterns of any kind, one must rise to the intellectual level since
> inferences are intellectual constructs.
> DM:Disagree, there are all kinds of patterns going on in nature,
> interacting with each other in inorganic and non-human ways,
> nothing intellectual here in human sense, plenty of expectations
> and propensities exist though. Purpose/process/intelligence everywhere,
> but I suggest the intellectual term is kept for human abstract-symbollic
> reasoning.
Steve:
Are you disagreeing that intellect is required to infer patterns or that
patterns existed before intellect? I'm not saying that all patterns are
intellectual patterns, but I am saying that patterns don't exist without
intellect to infer them.
Do you have a good definition of "pattern" which might move the discussion
forward? I looked it up and the best I could find was "perceptual
structure."
Regards,
Steve
From ZAMM part 1:
"Modern man has his ghosts and spirits too, you know.''
``What?''
``Oh, the laws of physics and of logic -- the number system -- the principle
of algebraic substitution. These are ghosts. We just believe in them so
thoroughly they seem real.
``They seem real to me,'' John says.
``I don't get it,'' says Chris.
So I go on. ``For example, it seems completely natural to presume that
gravitation and the law of gravitation existed before Isaac Newton. It would
sound nutty to think that until the seventeenth century there was no
gravity.''
``Of course.''
``So when did this law start? Has it always existed?''
John is frowning, wondering what I am getting at.
``What I'm driving at,'' I say, ``is the notion that before the beginning of
the earth, before the sun and the stars were formed, before the primal
generation of anything, the law of gravity existed.''
``Sure.''
``Sitting there, having no mass of its own, no energy of its own, not in
anyone's mind because there wasn't anyone, not in space because there was no
space either, not anywhere...this law of gravity still existed?''
Now John seems not so sure.
``If that law of gravity existed,'' I say, ``I honestly don't know what a
thing has to do to be nonexistent. It seems to me that law of gravity has
passed every test of nonexistence there is. You cannot think of a single
attribute of nonexistence that that law of gravity didn't have. Or a single
scientific attribute of existence it did have. And yet it is still `common
sense' to believe that it existed.''
John says, ``I guess I'd have to think about it.''
``Well, I predict that if you think about it long enough you will find
yourself going round and round and round and round until you finally reach
only one possible, rational, intelligent conclusion. The law of gravity and
gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton. No other conclusion makes
sense.
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