Re: Physics is a human construct

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>]

> 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 pass=C8.
>
>
> This argument (dismissal as passe') is even less answereable.

I could consult my son, a philosophy professor (philosophy of science),
but I already know of my daughter's take on this. Which authority do
you cite in this area? My comment that this issue is dead is merely
expert opinion from the humanities; it's not science we're talking
about here. In the humanities these things go in and out of fashion,
and this "self-awareness" stuff is currently out.

Please do not dismiss my "arguments" in this manner; they were not
meant to be arguments. You may, indeed, possess knowledge I do not;
it would be surprising were that not so. However on this particular
point I do not believe you do. I opt here for the Principle of
Mediocrity; what Reason, other than your own perception of an
indescribable phenomenon, do you have for discarding it?

The uniqueness argument is also far from science. It is redolent, in
fact, of old time religion. Science pretty much washed its hands of
such nonsense about the time of Darwin. Many modern religions have
done so as well (e.g. New Age, Greenpeace, etc.).

> 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.

My own approach to this and many other comparably difficult
questions is to acknowledge my incapability to answer them. I
perceive vast lacunae in my own knowledge, and I believe that
some of them I hold in common with all men - and all women, too.

Leigh