Gordon:
> >> >So it defies the "laws" of physics. Well, that's pretty
> >> >interesting.
Dace:
> >> 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.
Gordon:
> >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).
Dace:
> 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.
You're losing me. When I speak about information I'm using Shannon's concepts -- it's something conveyed from a sender to a receiver which at minimum (one bit) selects this and not that. Physicists neither explain information nor explain it away -- they describe its behavior.
I remember that my name is Gordon and not Jim or Xenophon as a result of being able to recover some of the bits of the information that was sent to me, either by other persons (speech) or by my former self (encoded in the material of my body). If my memory of my name were entirely an interpretation, there would be no way for me to recover that information and determine whether my name was one thing or another. The transmission and recording of information, in the sense I'm using the term, requires energy and takes place in physical space and time.
> > > >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.
Not in the _American_Heritage_Dictionary_ I appropriated from my capitalist masters a few years ago.
> 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.
So you can remember things absent a brain? How? And why does materiality define mentality out of existence? How do you know it isn't the way mind does things? I don't see the conflict.