Elschlager wrote:
Just thought I would present some information about the contents of
the book

A) *** Say a little bit more about what the theorem on all souls is
about ***

Case 1. Ten years ago Aunt G was crogenically frozen at death, and a
190 years from today she will successfully be unfrozen and brought
back to life. She will indeed be successfully brought back to life 190
years from today. That is a given in case 1.

Case 2. Here is the other situation. Aunt G died 10 years ago. It was
a "regular" death: there was no cyrogenesis or anything special.

I and many others too, would feel, or sense, or believe, or think, or
be sure that there is a difference, a "real" difference between these
two cases - a difference in the nature of things.

The theorem in the book states that in terms of the "nature of things"
there is no difference whatsoever between 1 and 2. To me, that is
surprising. But that is what some theorems do. They state surprising
results.

Does the book define life and death so that stating there is no
difference means something?

B) *** What do you mean by "soul"? ***

(1) The book's preface states that the words "soul", "sentience",
"consciousness", "mind", "awareness", "I-ness", "being" are words
that have different nuances, and in places more than differences in
nuance, but they all swirl around the underlying mystery that this
book approaches. In other words, these words are used pretty
interchangeably in terms of the analysis in the book. The difference
between these words is not what this book is delving into.

Is the author Joss Whedon?

It is very simple to tell if humans have souls. We simply find
indentical twins where one does and one does not have a soul. That may
be difficult to find so we simply to observe people without souls.

Without playing games, as we cannot observe with and without cases it
is mental masturbation to attempt to describe something which
presense or absense cannot be observed. Tell me we can describe light
without a wavelength, a circle without curvature or a human without
the nature of a human.

(2) The book attempts to list characteristics or properties of what we
take to be mind (that is, soul, sentience, being, consciousness, and
so on). To list characteristics or properties is one scientific
approach, especially when one is trying to establish a foundation for
science moving into a new area.

As above this is not scientific. These are descriptions of the nature
of a human as angles and sides are descriptions of the nature of a
square. We cannot have a square without sides nor a human without
whatever he chooses to name.

The fabric of the universe could also be phrased as "the nature of
things." Not only that, but in science, some of the most important
features of the nature of things can appear as un-understandable magic
(see the sections on Fizeau and Newton).

We discriminate particles by their characteristics. Take away or
change a characteristic and it is a different particle or does not
exist at all.

As we cannot separate out a "soul" the use of the word soul is like
spin in particles, misleading people to think the particle actually
spins. It is reasonable in this case to avoid the word soul and do the
particle physics, up, down, strange, charm. Those have sort of human
meanings so I suggest instead of soul we call it spin and then
describe it.

--
The question is not if there is repression in Iran. The
question is if it is greater or lesser than under the
Shah, the American flunky.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3112