RE: Immortality

From: Charles Goodwin <cgoodwin.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 09:37:07 +1200

> -----Original Message-----
> From: rwas [mailto:mc68332.domain.name.hidden]
> Sent: Saturday, 15 September 2001 3:08 p.m.
>
> Sequential, temporal,
> in-the-box thinking is not how to transcend the physical in my view.

I think some of the people here would argue that you *can't* transcend the physical (or possibly the computational). I appreciate
that that sounds very in-the-box, but if you look at the sort of thing physicists (who *tend* to be materialists - not always) have
come up with in last 20-30 years, I'd say there has definitely been *some* jumping out of the box... including quite a lot by David
Deutsch.

> In addition, if there is anything my own personal journey has taught me
> is that to breach boundaries in understanding, must discard
> preconceived notions. It would seem that if one were interested in
> truth, one adopt a realm of purely abstract thinking to find answers to
> such an esoteric question as consciousness. But what I feel is
> happening here is an attempt to force understanding to fit an almost
> certainly flawed initial assumption about existence.

I agree. Every breakthrough in human thought has been at the expense of preconceived notions. Are you saying we *should* "adopt a
realm of purely abstract thinking to find answers to such an esoteric question as consciousness" ? (If so I think a lot of the
people here would agree - the approach using computationalism is VERY abstract).

However - what I'm most interested to know is, what is the "almost certainly flawed initial assumption about existence" ?

Charles
Received on Sun Sep 16 2001 - 14:35:10 PDT