Re: History-less observer moments

From: Alastair Malcolm <amalcolm.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 14:51:07 +0100

----- Original Message -----
From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
> > [AM:] "It seems to me that the potential problems that I have mentioned
can
> > readily
> > be recast in 'thought only' terms. For example, you currently have a
thought
> > corresponding to a perception of a vdu in front of you, together with
> > thoughts of a coherent past life - how can this orderliness be
explained?
> > Also, how is the complexity of the thought process itself to be
explained,
> > without invoking physics? And also to be explained would either be how
the
> > measure of isolated thoughts could come to be higher than the equivalent
> > thoughts occuring as part of the conventionally accepted physical world,
or
> > else how 'everything' could somehow *exclude* ordinary physics."
>
> It depends on what you take as fundamental. From a Cartesian viewpoint,
> thoughts and perceptions are fundamental - all else, including physics, is
> inferred and constructed from the coherence and relations we perceive.
Hence
> to use physics to explain that coherence and consistency is somewhat
circular.

Once again I can't see where you are getting your circularity from! The
puzzle of the 'coherence and relations we perceive' does not require physics
to *formulate* it (the puzzle), and neither does the puzzle of the
complexity of thinking itself (the complex interplay of perception, will,
emotion, reasoning and so on). The abstract reasoning used to 'construct'
physics (if that's how it works) is only *evidentially* dependent on
perceived relations, not *conceptually* dependent on them. Standard physics
of course is not the final explanation, but it is an interim one and it, or
something similar to it (it seems to me) has to be involved in finding this
final explanation.

Alastair
Received on Fri May 19 2000 - 06:58:18 PDT