Consciousness

John K Clark (johnkc@well.com)
Tue, 17 Jun 1997 23:59:55 -0700 (PDT)


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YakWax@aol.com On Tue, 17 Jun 1997 Wrote:

>As for the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?"
>there isn't, what we percieve as something is nothing.

Then why is there nothing rather than something? Anyway, isn't perception something?

>the only reason you're reading this is because you have no choice
>(you made a decision to read - but that decision was not your own,it
>was based on the trillions of things that went before it).

Either that or it was random, that is based on nothing. I know of no law of
logic that demands that every effect have a cause.

>I have no idea why you would consider the soul and consciousness as
>the same thing.

The soul as I understand it is something important, the only important thing
about me, the only important thing in the universe, is consciousness.

>Information is 'about' physical things. It must be representing
>something physical and it must be represented by something physical.

If I am sad, frightened, angry and jealous then I am feeling 4 emotions.
Are Emotions something physical?

>How are you defining the soul exactly ?

The essential thing that makes me be me.

>If the soul is like information, what is the information on ?

Information on the position and velocity of atoms.

>An abstraction would only seem the same, on a physical level it
>would not be identical and nor would it react the same.

I'm not sure what you mean by "an abstraction" but I agree, if something does
not react the same then it is not the same, I was supposing it did.

>>Me:
>>It seems to me that the mind is what the brain does, if two brains
>>are doing the same thing then there is only one mind.

>Only if they occupy the exact same space, otherwise they are seperate.
>All of the differences between seperate objects are due to position
>and movement.

By itself a brain can not detect it's position, a brain can't detect anything,
only the position of the brain's sense organs is important. It's not just
space, a brain can't detect time either, I could stop your brain for a
billion years and then restart it and you would never know unless your senses
told you.

John K Clark johnkc@well.com

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