Re: Sentience

J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Thu, 7 May 1998 21:11:03 -0700


From: Scott Badger
<wbadger@psyberlink.net>
>I think it was Alan Watts who first
introduced me
>to the idea that our brains trick us
into thinking that
>we have souls.

"our brains"? What ephemeral ghosts the
owners of brains consider themselves!
What fools we think ourselves -- that
our recalictrant brains can trick us so!
What dastardly dissembling, to delude
these ghosts (that means "us") to
believe that we might carry on -- after
our dear brains have fed voracious worms
or flames.

But wait! Might not the pulsing brain
itself inquire... Does this uncanny
believer-in-souls harbor some doubt
about the power of the rubbery/gooey
mass inside the cranium walls?

Every believer has a beginning and an
end. Brain matter, and the life that
makes it, neither begins nor ends. It
rather self-organizes ceaselessly
against entropy. It exults in the
ecstatic growth that infuses extropy.
Ah, this!

Cheers,

J R