X-Message-Number: 23859
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2004 10:22:59 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #23846 - #23855

Hi everyone!

Some interesting messages by several participants.

For Bob Ettinger: If you dismiss Goedel's theorem as "meaningless 
playing with symbols" you'll get a significant number of mathematicians
disgusted with you. That may not really matter; however language itself
is purely of symbols, and isn't completely shared by any other living
creature on Earth --- although both we and most mammals do have a
sense in which we can distinguish up to about 3 objects. This working
with symbols has turned out to be very useful: if you have an actual
physical awareness of just how many 100 billion or 100 trillion may
be, a lot of people will get very interested in how your brain does it.

This is not to say, however, as I pointed out in my previous message,
that we should not test the results of our playing with symbols against
our real experiences. Not to do this is REALLY meaningless playing with
symbols. Trying to do such tests is science.

For Dave Pizer: You don't get PERIASTRON so you may not know that 
scientists are right now attempting to work out, experimentally, just
how our awareness works. They aren't doing philosophy, they're 
trying to see what circuits in our brain produce our sense of awareness.
For what it's worth, so far such studies have not found anything like
a separate awareness circuit. There are plenty of circuit loops that
pass through different brain regions but all of which pass through
one particular brain area. It is the circuit loop, not the brain
area, which seems to play the major part in awareness. Such loops
also pass through our different memory areas, too. Of what can we be
aware if we have no memories at all (I mean NONE AT ALL, no cheating
here)? Without our memories we couldn't even know how to look at
anything, much less tell what we were looking at.

If you're seriously interested in this kind of research I'm happy to
send you some references privately --- plus copies of PERIASTRON
articles on this subject.

               Best wishes and long long life to all,

                   Thomas Donaldson

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