At 01:29 PM 2/16/05 -1000, 'gnome' wrote:

Jim, I sent the link to your Shattered Shells FOTD philosophy discussion to a friend of mine. He responded with "Aside from the huge leaps in logic, the wrong information, it's about as good as this":

http://www.setaihedron.com/mind.htm

Just something to further fuel your philosphizing!

The material at the web site reads like the nonsense filler in a spam e-mail. Philosophy that must bury itself in such a deluge of words all too often holds nothing but emptiness. This is exactly the kind of stuff that convinces me that the materialistic view of consciousness is a blind alley. I am convinced that it is impossible for the activity of the brain to generate consciousness. The writer of the article on the web site apparently thinks otherwise, but he fails to make it clear how, in his opinion, self-awareness can arise from the interaction of unconscious brain regions. He should read a few books such as "The Astonishing Hypothesis" by Francis Crick and re-write his article to make his idea of the actual consciousness-generation process clearer. I am still waiting to see someone describe the actual birth of that initial spark of self-awareness. I want to see the change from objective to subjective made as clear as the teachings of geology. I will not accept any evasive apologies such as 'some things we shall never know'. And BTW, if we're going to continue this discussion, let's move it to the philofractal list. Jim (am I describing my own stuff?) M.