The Programmer Dude wrote: <much cut>

Do you really doubt the, um, reality of reality?

It all depends on how the word 'reality' is defined. And, yes, I sometimes do question the reality of at least the physical world, which in the world of science is considered the basis of reality.

As for answering your question, please re-read all of philosophical and scientific readings from all of human history.

It would be great fun, but unfortunately I haven't got the time.

After you finish that you'll realize that no one else knows, either.

I knew this even before you stated it. I myself stated that the answers to the questions are mysteries.

Not everyone feels [that consciousness is generated by the brain]. The field of AI has a big division between those who feel (human-like) consciousness is merely a matter of sufficient complexity (If you build it, it will think.), while others feel that the *mind* (opposed to the brain) is much more than a big wet switchboard.

A 'hard-AI' machine might behave as though it is thinking, but will it be aware that it is thinking? This is another debate that will never be settled, unless, that is, someone can devise a repeatable experiment that would objectively demonstrate consciousness itself rather than mere mechanistic behavior. Obviously, before this can be done, the field of metaphysics will need to be taken far more seriously.

(FWIW, I fall firmly into the latter category--I believe in the soul.)

I will take you at your word, but please describe this soul you believe in, and state a few of its attributes. I assume the soul of your belief is a bit more than an amorphous and undetect- able bit of vapor. If it is not, then what you have is hope rather than belief.

I recall a long ago short SF story about the world-wide phone system achieving consciousness...I believe the last line was about the phones starting to ring... everywhere at once! :-)

I also recall the story. I think it was written by Ray Bradbury.

What you MEAN is that matter like rocks and tables [lack consciousness].

It's not the presumably unconscious brain matter itself that is supposed to generate consciousness. It is the activity of the intricately connected material of the brain that creates, or some would say, *IS* consciousness. When a person is conscious, his brain matter is assumed to be doing the 'consciousness' activity; when that person is unconscious, the matter is doing something else. Here I wonder if the far more complex behavior of the entire universe might also be an aspect of a conscious- ness -- a far greater consciousness.

I take it you don't at all subscribe to the theories of hard AI?

I'm actually neutral about the possibility. What I doubt is that we will ever devise an unambiguous way of determining whether hard (or strong) AI is present. Even the existence of human consciousness is a puzzling thing to determine. If you suppose that recognizing the existence of human consciousness is a simple task, ask a neurologist who has experience with patients in a deep coma.

NOTHING remains the same from day to day. NOTHING. Your location is moving at huge speeds every second (relative to the frame of the universe). Your cells are constantly changing. The atoms in your body are constantly changing. So is your mind and consciousness.

Apparently, you wrote this without too much thought. Though the material and appearance of my body is changing slowly, and my thoughts are changing more rapidly; my individual identity, my particular awareness, most certainly has stayed the same. I am the same person today as I have been through my entire life. I assume this is also true with you.

I, for one, surely hope MY spirit evolves in step with the rest of the universe.

So do I. A spirit stagnated for all eternity would be one of the worst hells.

You continue to make what I consider a fundamental error in thought: you think the immaterial can be illuminated by the material. How can it? Are they not completely different domains?

You continue to mis-understand my view. I do not claim that the immaterial (spiritual) can be known through objective material means; I claim that it can be glimpsed through subjective means such as meditation. The problem is that knowledge gained through subjective means cannot be demonstrated scientifically, and therefore is not considered valid by those who put their faith in science. If there were no way at all of gaining knowledge of the immaterial, or if it did not exist, how would all the stories of its reality have come into being? (I am aware that primitive men are supposed to have invented the immaterial realm in an effort to escape the fear of death.)

**IF** what controls the brain and body is non-material, then the universe is not, in fact, a closed system.

And those who assume it is a closed system are mistaken.

How many of us really have an "intuition" of how DNA works? Or, for that matter, a modern jet engine. Or any of a myriad *physical* things.

An important point. Everything I know about most scientific things I have learned by reading books written by the 'high priests' of science. And I must accept these things on faith, because I have personally observed very few of the experiments that demonstrate the truth of what is in the books. Science is like religion, where only the chosen few have had the mystical experience, (observed the experiment), that validates the belief (hypothesis).

As far as we know so far, these [quantum] phenomena are quite material. They're just a bit beyond our ken.

I would say they are quite far beyond our ken. Ten dimensions, time that flows backward, quantum entanglement, etc. are not things we observe every day. And if subatomic particles actually are tiny bits of materialized energy zipping around in an imaginary Hilbert space, is this not an interaction of the material and immaterial such as we have been discussing? Jim (now back to fractals) Muth