X-Message-Number: 3998
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #3988 - #3995
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 1995 13:44:55 -0800 (PST)



To Mike Darwin:

If Greg knows of any way to contact Suda, I'd be very interested too. I've been
trying to do just that, by both fax and phone. He was once but is not longer
the President of Kobe University. I don't plan to stop trying to reach him,
but it HAS turned out to be much harder than I first thought.

To Bob Ettinger:

Basically I agree with you, but I would point out that even our thinking need
not obviously use symbols. Clearly we need symbols to communicate with others,
and I suspect that it's that fact which confuses people about the role of 
symbols in general. Yet even in thinking about math or physics, we use all 
kinds of other things: images, kinesthetic feelings, etc. I believe that brains
have evolved extremely complex ways of reacting to the outside world --- 
and a lot of our thinking consists of these reactions, not simply of manipulat-
ing symbols.

I think this becomes particularly clear on introspection if we watch ourselves
trying to work out what to say or write. If we knew the proper symbols (words,
etc) in the first place, we wouldn't spend time working at the problem of 
whether or not to use them. But we try to pick and choose, and the criteria
by which we do so depend on what we want to say ... not itself a set of 
symbols (else why should we choose THOSE symbols as criteria, and ... infinite
regress).

			Best and long long life,
				Thomas Donaldson

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