cP28. Donald Mackay, an information theorist and physicist, counters the Cartesian notion of Karl Popper and John Eccles that the brain must be open to non-physical influences if mental activity is to be effective. Consider a computer set up to solve a mathematical equation.
Mackay makes the interesting point that, as a computer program may be "embodied" in different physical machines,
I would like to hone the notion of determinism by arguing that the word is used as an explanation for a pattern, in which sub-pattern A is judged to necessarily be followed by sub-pattern B. The "laws of physics" are explanations, reinforced with mathematics, that explain and thus predict that phenomenon A "must" be followed by phenomenon B. When a set of such explanations accounts for a plenitude of phenomena, it is considered a good theory, or a very useful explanation. Of course, modern physics relies on the uniformity and regularity of nature as an article of faith -- though quantum weirdness undermines that creed at least somewhat.
No physical explanation, it seems to me, can ever get at the fundamental nitty gritty of the cosmos's animation. That is beyond human ken, as far as I can tell.
As for Mackay's thought on resurrection implying the possibility of some computer program -- i.e. soul -- providing self-identity from one embodiment to the next, I would like to stretch that idea a bit more by drawing an analogy between the universal Turing machine (UTM), which can be set to any computable program. The UTM, I suppose, would be analogous to an Oversoul -- or in other word, God. There is an infinitude of possible programs (with the 7 billion of the human variety now present with us comprising an infinitesimally small percentage of that set). So, following Mackay, we might say it is within logic to say that while possibly most programs exist only transiently (though they subsist in the Platonic set of possibilities), the "human" TM programs either continue forever or indefinitely. Further, we can imagine the UTM resetting some of the conditions on the continuing TMs (us) to improve their efficiency (transformed by the renewing of their minds).
Another point: Just as there is no reason that a UTM cannot inhabit a number of computers simultaneously, what is the objection to the Oversoul/God being expressed in many embodiments? Similarly, as a TM can be simultaneously poly-local, what is the objection to human bi- or poly-localism?
Obviously, we must not lose sight of the fact that all this expresses only rough analogies offered for the purpose of saying that not only do non-physical entities exist -- or subsist -- but that there is no logical reason to deny Christian verities merely on the basis of physicalism.
The mathematician means by this that the behaviour of the computer is determined by the equation he wants to solve; were it not so, it would be of no interest to him. On the other hand, if we were to ask a computer engineer what is happening in the computer, he could easily demonstrate that every physical event in it was determined (same word) by the laws of physics as applied to the physical components. Any appearance of conflict here would be quite illusory. There is no need for a computer to be "open to non-physical influences" in order that its behavior may be determined by a (non-physical) equation as well as the laws of physics. The two "claims to determination" here are not mutually exclusive; rather they are complementary.But, MacKay adds, the analogy is limited by the fact that we (unlike the computer) are conscious agents.
Mackay makes the interesting point that, as a computer program may be "embodied" in different physical machines,
mechanistic brain science would seem to raise ... little objection to the hope of eternal life expressed in biblical Christian doctrine, with its characteristic emphasis on the "resurrection" (not to be confused with the resuscitation) of the body. The destruction of our present embodiment sets no logical barrier to our being re-embodied, perhaps in a quite different medium, if our Creator so wishes.The quotations are from Mackay's contribution to The Oxford Companion to the Mind, Richard L. Gregory, ed. (Oxford 1987) as cited in the anthology Immortality, Paul Edwards, ed. (Prometheus 1997). Mackay in the first quotation refers to The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism by Popper and Eccles (Springer-Verlag 1977).
I would like to hone the notion of determinism by arguing that the word is used as an explanation for a pattern, in which sub-pattern A is judged to necessarily be followed by sub-pattern B. The "laws of physics" are explanations, reinforced with mathematics, that explain and thus predict that phenomenon A "must" be followed by phenomenon B. When a set of such explanations accounts for a plenitude of phenomena, it is considered a good theory, or a very useful explanation. Of course, modern physics relies on the uniformity and regularity of nature as an article of faith -- though quantum weirdness undermines that creed at least somewhat.
No physical explanation, it seems to me, can ever get at the fundamental nitty gritty of the cosmos's animation. That is beyond human ken, as far as I can tell.
As for Mackay's thought on resurrection implying the possibility of some computer program -- i.e. soul -- providing self-identity from one embodiment to the next, I would like to stretch that idea a bit more by drawing an analogy between the universal Turing machine (UTM), which can be set to any computable program. The UTM, I suppose, would be analogous to an Oversoul -- or in other word, God. There is an infinitude of possible programs (with the 7 billion of the human variety now present with us comprising an infinitesimally small percentage of that set). So, following Mackay, we might say it is within logic to say that while possibly most programs exist only transiently (though they subsist in the Platonic set of possibilities), the "human" TM programs either continue forever or indefinitely. Further, we can imagine the UTM resetting some of the conditions on the continuing TMs (us) to improve their efficiency (transformed by the renewing of their minds).
Another point: Just as there is no reason that a UTM cannot inhabit a number of computers simultaneously, what is the objection to the Oversoul/God being expressed in many embodiments? Similarly, as a TM can be simultaneously poly-local, what is the objection to human bi- or poly-localism?
Obviously, we must not lose sight of the fact that all this expresses only rough analogies offered for the purpose of saying that not only do non-physical entities exist -- or subsist -- but that there is no logical reason to deny Christian verities merely on the basis of physicalism.
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