From: The Baileys (nanotech@cwix.com)
Date: Sat Apr 17 1999 - 12:01:21 MDT
-----Original Message-----
From: John Heritage <xebec@home.com>
To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
Date: Saturday, April 17, 1999 8:20 AM
Subject: Soul - Prove/Disprove?
>
> I have a few questions :
>
> 1> Does anyone know of a way (ethical or unethical - I'm asking
>purely for knowledge) to "test" and "prove" whether or not
> there is an existance of a soul that "attaches" to the human body
>somehow?
I consider the question of whether we have "soul" to be a reworded version
of the consciousness debate. Is consciousness some uncomputable
characteristic of our brains or is it just self-reflexivity within a formal
system? If the answer is the former then we can begin to entertain notions
of a "soul" (though there is no evidence for the former that I'm aware of).
If the answer is the latter then consciousness is impenetrable and defeats
all attempts to formalize it because of the same reasons Godel showed we
can't extract truth from axiomatic systems.
Doug Bailey
doug.bailey@ey.com
nanotech@cwix.com
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