Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!mcgill-vision!quiche!utility From: utility@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca (Ronald BODKIN) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Recursive Searles, or what? Message-ID: <1933@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca> Date: 9 Jan 90 02:14:39 GMT References: <12679@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <12702@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <1224@oravax.UUCP> Reply-To: utility@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca (Ronald BODKIN) Organization: SOCS, McGill University, Montreal, Canada Lines: 34 In article gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) writes: >What is the difference between a ``pattern'' produced by physical >entities that is not the entities themselves, and a non-physical >mind-stuff? Certainly a pattern of organization does not produce new >physical entities that did not previously exist, so the pattern must >be non-physical. So ``pattern'' (in the sense you are using it) and >``mind-stuff'' in Penrose's sense seem to me to be two names for the >same thing. This, of course, gets into a very old philosophical argument about the nature of universals. When Aristotle s id form is embedded in matter, did he become a dualist? In many people's view, he refuted the dualism of Plato by this concept. One can assert that pattern is either: 1) a tool used to simplify the immense complexity of the universe (e.g. it is really incorrect to say a car stopped when you pushed the break, the thing which made the car stop was no more and no less than the quantum (and sub-quantum) level interactions of everything in the universe within the distance of the speed of light over the given period of the event, and the initial probability distributions in the universe, but this needs simplification). 2) somehow more real yet not a stuff As best I recall, the most extreme view (there isn't pattern at all, and when you say the word the meaning ends at "pattern") is called nominalism, while there are a number of intermediate views before postulating an ontological status for pattern (as mind-stuff). I would say that pattern has an epistemological status, in that it is perceived by minds, and if there is a potential for any mind or anything which can "think" to discover it, it exists, but that pattern is not ontological (i.e. essentially part of the nature of being) -- so that in the universe after energy death there is no pattern. So this is why one can speak of pattern and yet not be peaking of a mind-stuff, since that DOES postulate a somewhat more "concrete" reality for that stuff. Ron