Re: Physics is a human construct

[Charles Crummer <ccrummer@cats.ucsc.edu>]

Bob Sciamanda wrote:

> 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.
Every time I teach a course called "Mind and Machine" I wrestle with these
issues.  The text for this course is a little book by John Searle, I
believe, "Mind and Machine."  Searle's thesis is that what we call
consciousness comprises more functionality than can be achieved, in
principle, by a digital automaton or any other digital program.  He sees
consciousness as the result of the chemical and whatever other physical
activities may be taking place in the brain; no soul.  Searle, like
Laplace, has no need for God or the soul.

Goedel, Turing, and Church somewhat independently arrived at demonstrations
of undecidablilty.  Goedel produced a statement which is formally
undecidable but true.  How did he come up with such a statememt?  Turing
showed that there are computer programs which will never halt but cannot be
formally, i.e. by a prescribable finite sequence of rules, diagnosed as
such.  How?  He produced one.  These men produced notions which, by
demonstration, no machine could.

If consciousness is just chemistry and maybe quantum mechanics, it can be
prescribed by a finite set of rules.  Can't it?

	Charlie