On Sat, 22 Feb 1997, Tim Rhodes wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Feb 1997, Tadeusz Niwinski wrote:
>
> > Where were we?... Yes, what do you think of the three axioms?
>
> Well, lets see...
> Existence exists. Sure, I'll give ya' that. There is
> /something/, period. It may be the most complicated waveform imaginable,
> the mushroom addled dreams of a heavy bearded god, or discrete concrete
> objects interacting, the details are pretty sketchy if you ask me. But
> /something/ is going on.
> Identity. Hmmm... Things are what they are? No, I can't give
> you that one. Things ARE different things in different situations. If
> you need a repeatable experiment to prove this we can go back to Quantum
> Physics. In different situations (different measuring devices) a photon is
> different things (wave or particle). Another equally telling experiment
> we've all done, is to take the lover that you know ever so well, back home
> to meet your parents, and see who all of them they turn into. Different
> situations, different identity. And since complexity is growing (or more
> accurately, localizing around us), I don't see that it is possible to say
> that /something/ is "the set of things that it /can/ become in changing
> situations". I don't think these are closed sets in a complexifying
> environment.
> Consciousness. Well it certainly is not redundant. Unless you want
> to say that "without an observer there is no observed". If that's part of
> how you understand Identity or Existence, then sure. Identity implys that
> there is a consciousness doing the identifying. I might go so far as to
> say that the nature of Consciousness implys the phenomenon of Identity (or
> even Existence). Making, at least, axiom #2 non-axiomatic. But, yes, you
> can have this one too. Consciousness is, period. Again, the details are
> mighty sketchy and up for debate.
>
> And that's the fun part.
>
>
> Prof. Tim
>
>