On Thu, May 12, 2005 at 02:48:17PM -0400, Jesse Mazer wrote:
> Generally, unasked-for attempts at armchair psychology to explain the
> motivations of another poster on an internet forum, like the comment that
> someone "just wants to hear themself talk", are justly considered flames
> and tend to have the effect of derailing productive discussion. I actually
> agree with your other comments about it being implausible that the mentally
> ill have some sort of superior insight into reality, but hey, this list is
> all about rambling speculations about half-formed ideas that probably won't
> pan out to anything, you could just as easily level the same accusation
> against anyone here.
>
> Jesse
>
Furthermore, some people in this are taking quite seriously the
proposition that reality is a whole is derived from the properties of
consciousness. Therefore if some consciousnesses do not experience
time like we experience it, this expands the possible forms time can
have, or may even reduce the TIME (or equivalent) proposition to a
probabilistic rule. The discussion is very relevant.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to establish consciousness in
other beings - dogs probably are conscious, but insects
probably are not for example. So alas, I really have been unable to
assimilate what this case of mentally ill means for the general theory.
--
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile)
Mathematics 0425 253119 (")
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
- application/pgp-signature attachment: stored
Received on Thu May 12 2005 - 19:28:20 PDT