Computer \"reads\" memories... (Humans)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 30, 2010, 14:51 (5351 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: ...an explanation must really DO something.-We can probably end this discussion if you tell me what you expect an explanation to "DO"! I expect it to give me reasons for something, or to clarify something I don't understand. We both agree that no-one can yet explain the origin of life, and so all that the different theories can "do" is offer an attempt at clarification. Design, however, leads to the mystery of who did the designing, while chance leads to the mystery of how inanimate matter can spontaneously make itself animate, reproducible, adaptable and ... ultimately ... conscious. Neither theory stops science from investigating how it all happened. You go on to ask: "Why enter a realm of the completely subjective?" Why not? The question for me is not what an explanation "does", but whether it might be true. Until the truth is known (if it ever is), there can only be a "completely subjective" conclusion, whether it's design or chance. I'm not prepared to believe either, but I don't expect everyone to be an agnostic just because I can't decide. -Perhaps, though, we might broaden the discussion and consider another category of subjectivity, because the term has become far too negatively loaded. There is also intersubjectivity. Our human world would be even more chaotic than it is now if we dismissed all our basic premises as "subjective". We have a consensus in our society, for instance, that rape, infanticide, theft, murder etc. are "bad", although in the animal world from which we're descended, these are often essential to survival. If you lived in a society that regarded the "paranormal" as an everyday element of reality (not uncommon in Africa), your subjective scepticism would lead you to be regarded as an ignoramus. Let me nip any misunderstandings in the bud here ... I'm not arguing for the paranormal (or for design). I'm arguing against your dismissiveness of subjectivity, your own concept of which is culture-based and is not even provable within our own culture. There are billions of people who believe in some kind of designer, and this belief has endured throughout recorded history. That doesn't mean it's true, but nor should it be dismissed just because each individual's belief is subjective. I don't see subjectivity as necessarily being a bar to truth, particularly when it moves into the realms of intersubjectivity on such a uniquely colossal scale. I think you and I have similar parameters within which we impose our own limits on what is credible, but those parameters are subjective too. In your response to BBella you wrote: "I'd like to be able to explore and know everything there is to know in our cosmos." Me too, but until we can, it seems to me that we have to allow for the possibility that either David or George might be right with their subjective explanatory theories.