Computation and Human Experience (RRE)

[Dace]

>Dace:
>> >> Memory occupies time but not space.  ...
>
>Gordon:
>> >So it defies the "laws" of physics.  Well, that's pretty
>> >interesting.
>
>> Yes, it is, and I'd be extremely interested to know exactly how it is
that
>> this notion of memory is in conflict with physical laws.
>
>Memory is information.  In order to record or transmit
>information, one must use energy, a fact of considerable
>interest and importance to those who think about how machanical
>and animal brains work.  This energy occupies time and space,
>as energy always does (in the physics I know about, anyway).
>
Physicists equate information with order, which is the opposite of entropy
and therefore requires energy to create and maintain.  But when we look at
an ordered system, what we actually see is not "information" but
arrangements of molecules.  Whatever "meaning" these molecules have is
nothing more than our *interpretation* of their arrangements.  It's our
mind, not our eyes, which "sees" information in molecules.  It's a kind of
mystical vision: We "see" abstraction in concrete things.  In reality, only
the mind can abstract information from matter/energy.  Abstraction, by
definition, is not concrete-- it's not "there."  So when we define
information in terms of ordered molecules, we define it out of existence.
Physicists do not explain information.  They just explain it away.


> > >So, all this time we could have tossed those messy animal
> > >brains, computer chips, tapes, papers, graven tablets, knotted
> > >strings, and other inconvenient, energy-consuming, space-
> > >obtruding objects?


> > These are examples, not of memory, but of memory aids.  They've
obviously
> > been of some use to us down the centuries.


>They certainly have.  Would you care to point out an example
>of aidless (immaterial) memory?  Maybe that would clarify
>your idea for me.

Memory, by definition, is immaterial.  It's precisely when we remember
something that we don't need a memory aid, such as tapes or tablets or knots
in a string.  To assume that the brain itself is a kind of recording device
is to define memory out of existence.  The point seems to be the conceptual
annihilation of mentality.  Physicalism does to mind what Christianity does
to the body: If only we could eliminate it, at last we would have perfect
wisdom!  Nothing new here.  Just another form of mystical nihilism.

Ted