[ExI] digital simulations, descriptions and copies

Gordon Swobe gts_2000 at yahoo.com
Fri Jan 22 14:41:56 UTC 2010


--- On Thu, 1/21/10, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:

>> To say "there is no logical pathway from a lump of
>> matter to meaning" is equivalent to saying that mind and
>> matter exist in separate realms. It seems then that you
>> really do want to espouse the mind/matter dualism handed
>> down to us from Descartes.
> 
> I'm saying this to show where your assertion that syntax
> can't produce meaning leads.

My assertion leads simply to a philosophy of mind in which the brain attaches meanings to symbols in some way that we do not yet fully understand. Nothing more.

In the next step of our journey we must decide between monism and not-monism (usually dualism). I choose monism.

Looks to me like the world is comprised of just one kind of stuff. Some configurations of that one stuff have conscious understanding of symbols. Most if not all other configurations of that stuff do not.

-gts






      



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list