Re: OT: Memes Vs. Free Will

From: Scott Stephens (scottxs_at_comcast.net)
Date: 09/26/04 

Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 21:05:35 GMT

Clifford Heath wrote:

> Guy Macon wrote:
>

> I used to hang onto the quantum loophole as a place where miracles
> could occur, and though that's still possible, I see no need for
> them now. If we hope for eternity, we need to seek a non-material
> factor in the psyche - spirit - which can outlast material decay.

All the spirit's bits fade with the rotting RNA. I seek a motive, a
pulse of momentum, and forget about all the ugly details of past lives,
last night's dream. To the future...

Then again, something really awful might happen. Imagine a
super-intelligent life form which evolved from the human race. With its
extreme technology, it begins researching its past. With a reverse-time
scanner, it "resurrects" the past-history light cone (provided its
possible) and "pays back" everybody that has been naughty and nice.

Now if you were a super-intelligent, fair-minded, highly-evolved
creature, would you go back and right histories wrongs, and fix things
up, so when you went to the bar a few galaxies over to party with your
fellow galactic entities, you wouldn't be ashamed of all the bodies of
those poor hairless primates that built you and were buried in your past?

> But observing that the issue of free will isn't solved by that
> supposition (as I argued before), there is still no eternal basis
> for valuing choices and outcomes.

Wrong - unless you do not value your life, the life which enables your
consciousness to despise it! That is, if by eternal you mean objective,
non-subjective. You are using reason to deduce that statement. You can
only use your reason because you are alive. Science is a tool of
systematic knowledge that only works in the context of reason. Science
and reason are tools of your mind, which your emotions (through the
agencies of parents and teachers) caused you to learn and develop. And
now your taking that tool out of the context of your will (motivations)?

Kind of like unplugging a computer from the context of electricity and
saying "it doesn't do anything useful, maybe its junk so I should toss it"? 

-- 
Scott
**********************************
DIY Piezo-Gyro, PCB Drill Bot & More Soon!
http://home.comcast.net/~scottxs/
Those who sow excuses shall reap excuses
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