>At 03:11 PM 1/29/97 -0500, Brian D. Harper wrote:
>
>>Another danger in tying our notion of spirituality to physical criteria is
>>that it invites a physical explanation of spirituality. I think most (all)
>>of us aren't going to like this idea too much, but how do you fairly poo
>>poo it if it follows from the criteria that we've helped to establish?
>>In other words, suppose someone finds a physical theory which accounts
>>for all the physical criteria that we've talked about. What would we
>>say then? "err, uh, you know, uh that's not really what I meant by
>>spirituality, er, uh, spirituality is not reducible to physics er uh ..."
>>Best to make this distinction to begin with methinks.
>
>Brian,
>
>I must ask for a clarification here. While I fully agree that spirituality
>can not be tied to the physical, spirituality DOES have a physical effect
>which should be observable. In this light, wouldn't it be allowable to
>examine the evidence of behavior and if it is like what we do, include the
>being in humanity? Isn't that what we do with ancient Egyptians of any age,
>dynastic ca. 2600 B.C and pre-dynastic 4000 B.C.?
>
I would have to agree that the spiritual has an effect on the physical.
Might this not be a good interpretation of the book of James? Faith
without works is dead. A spirituality that has no effect on the physical
would seem to me likewise dead.
Let's look at this from the point of view of algorithmic information
theory. Given that the spiritual has an effect on the physical, is
this effect compressible? In other words, can we have something
more than a set of (incompressible) observations on how the spiritual
has affected the physical? Can we compress these observations into
a set of rules that allow us to determine objectively when a spiritual
event has occurred based upon our past observations? If this truly
worked then wouldn't the truly objective person conclude that the
physical effects we observe are the result of a physical phenomena
and that we're just a bunch of buffoons fooling ourselves with all
this blather about spiritual stuff?
When it comes down to it, I think the criteria or comparisons
that we're talking about relate to the mind of man rather than
the spirit. Along these lines let me propose a question. I should
save this for Jim but hey, there's no rule against asking the
same question twice. Let's suppose that 10 years from now
some clever engineer makes a computer that passes Von Neumanns
test (for sake of time and space I'll assume people know what this
is, if not I can elaborate). If so would you conclude that the machine
is thinking? And if so, would you include it in humanity? If not,
why? It seems Von Neumanns criteria is similar to what you're
proposing. [BTW, for sake of clarity, I don't believe Von Neumann
proposed that such a machine would be human, only that it
would be thinking].
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
Ohio State University