RE: Amoeba croaks -

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu Jan 14 01:24:31 1999

Hi Gilles

> What do you think of the
>phenomenological relevance of mechanism? That is, leaving completely aside
>the question of consciousness, do you think that known physical laws,
>applied to our collection of neural cells in interaction with the outer
>world, can reproduce our external behaviour, including language, artistic
>creations, etc?


I see things the other way round. I do believe in the relevance of
mechanism for both behaviour or even consciousness. For exemple
consciousness is linked to the facts that (self-referentially correct)
machines are able to know much more than they are able to proof or
communicate. This follow almost easily when (unlike Lucas or Penrose) we
agree that incompleteness phenomenon apply to us.
But, unlike most physicist, I do not take matter or physical laws (known
or unknown) for granted. Indeed my work show (or at least intend to show)
that once we take seriously mechanist hypothesis then we have no other
choice than to derive the physical laws from a kind of abstract
psychology which is itself derivable from computer science or number
theory.
To put it roughly : I think that the question of relevance of mechanism
is the question of explaining how (appearance of) matter and time
(including neural cells, brains, bodies) emerges on purely number
theoretical relations.

Bye. Bruno
Received on Thu Jan 14 1999 - 01:24:31 PST