From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Tue May 21 2002 - 21:06:07 MDT
On Tuesday, May 21, 2002, at 03:00 pm, Max More wrote:
> At 12:37 PM 5/21/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>
>> "Consciousness is what makes us 'human,' Professor McFadden said.
>> "Language, creativity, emotions, spirituality, logical deduction,
>> mental
>> arithmetic, our sense of fairness, truth, ethics, are all inconceivable
>> without
>> consciousness." But what's it made of?
>
> Gosh, great question! While you're at it, answer this one:
> What is the number 4 made of?
>
> All I know is that blue fnords snore transcendentally.
>
> This piece sounds silly -- the brain's EM field will be an
> epiphenomenon to neural activity.
>
> Max
Yes, I was greatly disturbed by this as well. There was no hint of
science, experimentation, exploration for this "hypothesis". In fact,
it wasn't even clear what problem was being solved or what observations
were being explained. It appeared simply to say that "consciousness" is
a fuzzy concept that isn't fully explored, and EM radiation around the
brain is sort of fuzzy and unknown, so maybe they somehow end up being
the same thing. There was no logic as to why consciousness needed more
than the brain or why it should be in EM. This seemed to be a
spiritualist in search of a scientific name for this spirit, and EM
radiation seemed a good fit. More and more science seems to be of this
nature.
I had a similar reaction to the people who thought there might be
information bits at a lower level than quarks. They seemed to think
that there were multiple bits of information about a particle, its
location and momentum. Therefore they concluded that each object
"contained" these bits as smaller components. That's like saying a
surgeon should be able to find my name inside me somewhere, or that my
weight is recorded somewhere in data memory in my body.
There seems to be a lack of abstract thought. People are confusing
labels with things, the map with the territory, and our classification
schemes with physical arrangements of reality.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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