Re: Physics is a human construct

["Bob Sciamanda" <trebor@velocity.net>]

Leigh wrote:
> Bob wrote:
> > . . .
> > At the root of man's unique uniqueness is his conscious awareness of
his
> > own existence and his mental states, which itself is inexplicable
through
> > "already explained phenomena";  it is knowable by personal experience
or
> > not at all. . . .
>
> My daughter, an anthropology professor who works with a
> primatologist colleague at the University of Alberta would not
> agree with you.

I don't know how to respond to this argument from unfamiliar authority
except to offer my compliments to your daughter.

> That business about self-awareness is pretty much passé.


This argument (dismissal as passe') is even less answereable.

Seriously, I believe that consciousness is a unique phenomenon,
presenting a unique modeling problem for science.  I have no problem
believing that everything else that I observe in natural phenomena
(including the behavior of animals and humans) is in principle
describable, modelable and even explainable as the behavior of automata -
reducible to molecular interactions.  The one exception is my own
directly experienced consciousness.  I cannot even describe this
phenomenon in terms of anything else; I have no means of conclusively
measuring or proving its existence in another entity; and I can imagine
no way in which any theoretical or experimental manipulation of atoms can
arrive at the observation: "Eureka! There we have produced
consciousness!"  Perhaps the very description of itself demarcates the
limitations of the human mind.

-Bob

Bob Sciamanda
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (ret)
trebor@velocity.net
http://www.velocity.net/~trebor