X-Message-Number: 3987
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 21:37:05 -0800
From: John K Clark <>
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Uploading

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 (Thomas Donaldson)

	    >How did it come about that life forms did not develop
	    >nanodevices further than the complex chemical reactions with    
	    >enzymes etc which they use?
	     
Because some designs are not available to nature since nature
has no insight. If the tire on your car is getting  worn you can
take it off and put a new one on but evolution could never do
something like that because when you take the old tire off you
have temporally made things worse, now you have no tire at all.
With evolution EVERY step ( generation), no matter how many, 
MUST be an immediate  improvement over the previous one. 
       
If we couldn't design better than nature there would be no point
in designing at all. Half a million years ago the only thing we
could make better than nature was stone tools but the number of
things were better at has been growing exponentially ever since.
       
	    >And please don't just give me a line about how inadequate life
	    >forms are.
	    
Logic never changes religious or semi religious convictions so
if you have blind faith in the perfection of nature, despite
overwhelming evidence to the contrary, then it would be
pointless to answer your question more fully.
	    
	    >No, we do not think in symbols. We learn to use them, but that
	    >isn't the same thing.
	    
It's impassable to think without thinking ABOUT something, it
may be the sun or a coffee cup or just yourself but its
SOMETHING and whatever that something is, it's a symbol. The
thing the symbol represents won't fit in your head. Even
abstract concepts like circles and straight lines are symbols,
there are no perfect circles or straight lines in the brain.  
	    
	    >a can opener is [not] operating with symbols.
	    
I agree. All it can do is react, as when one rock hits another rock.
		   
	    >The same is true of human  beings
	    
I disagree, the use of symbols is why human beings are fundamentally 
different than can openers.
	    
	    >In fact, most things in the world do not think in symbols when
	    >and if they ever think. They are reacting, just as water boils  
	    >when heat is applied.
	    
All mater can react but not all mater can use symbols, that's
why all mater is not intelligent. A cadaver can still react but
it can't think. 
	    
	    >If we had only symbols, we would inevitably find ourselves in
	    >an infinite  regress.
	    
Why? If we have senses and are sane a relationship exists
between the symbol and the external object.
	    
				 John K Clark            

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