[MD] Mystics and Brains

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting Case <Case at iSpots.com>:

> [Platt]
> Isn't there a contradiction between the first and second sentences? First,
> ideas can't exist without some to think them. Second, math relationships in
> nature would exist whether someone came along to think them or not. Are not
> math relationships in nature ideas? I believe Plato thought so.  
> 
> [Case]
> I see no contradiction at all. Relationships exist in nature whether we see
> then or not.

How do we know what we can't "see?" A matter of faith?

> Mathematic is a language for describing these relationships
> with such precisions that they should ultimately occur to any being
> sufficiently advance to see relationships in nature. We have only ourselves
> as a test case of course but at least in principle this view is falsifiable.
> The fact that we can mathematically create persistent, three dimensional
> virtual worlds suggests to me that it has something going for it.

The question is: Why are relationships (nature's laws) that occurred by chance
responsive to an intelligence expressed in mathematics?
 
> [Case]
> The key to the statement is not "impossible to know" it is "in principle" as
> in mathematically impossible to specify. This is not a philosophical
> speculation it is provable with logical rigor and comports with universal
> experience.

I see no reason why knowledge should be restricted to what is mathematically 
possible.

> What mystics and artists seriously believe it is possible to
> foretell the future? Most spin tales about the vagaries of fortune fill with
> twists of fate and happy circumstance. Many on the Christian right are given
> to such speculation about prophesy as are fringe elements of the New Age and
> callers to the Psychic Friends Hotline.

I don't believe it's possible to foretell the future, including the effects
of the weather, i.e., global warming.



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