From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Tue Jan 29 2002 - 20:58:23 MST
On 29 Jan 2002 at 22:35, Bruce W McLain wrote:
> Sorry Joe! Goedel's proof still holds even in a recursive system. A finite
> recursive system can still perform only a finite number of operations in a
> finite amount of time. The proof demonstrates that "In a consistent system
> complex enough to perform simple arithmetic there exists truths expressible
> in the system but would require an infinite number of operations to prove."
> Therefore it would require an infinite amount of time
>
Godel's Theorems hold ONLY in systems that are complex enough to
admit of recursion, for only in self-referential systems is it possible to
construct statements that are ABOUT the relationship between the
statements and the system in the system language, such as when
statement B says that "B is not an axiom of axiomatic system A".
>
> Having said that, I have to agree that Goedel's proof does not apply to the
> human mind or probably any self-conscious awareness. Not because of
> recursion, but because no one that I am aware of has seriously proposed that
> the human mind is consistent in the mathematical sense.
>
Mathematical recursion is a general attribute that has a particular
instantiation in the complex system of neurons and their axonal and
dendritic connections that is found in the human mind. It applies to
ANY recursive systems, and since we are consciously self-aware
(aware that we are aware), human minds are tokens of the type
'recursive system."
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <joedees@bellsouth.net>
> To: <virus@lucifer.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2002 8:17 PM
> Subject: Re: virus: Standing my ground (heaven: soul liberation or rapid
> synaptic misfire?)
>
>
> > On 29 Jan 2002 at 16:21, ben wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > [Joe 4]Sorry; self-conscious awareness requires sufficient complexity to
> allow for
> > > recursivity; such complexity must breach the godelian threshhold.
> > >
> > > [ben 4] Making your post the third reminder in a 24 hour period that I
> really must read
> > > "Godel, Escher, Bach"...
> > >
> > > [Joe 4] Awareness
> > > of itself is necessary to the monotheistic definition of a deity (I did
> not say
> > > awareness of other, for there can be no other for an omnipresent deity).
> Such
> > > necessary complexity to allow the fulfillment of a necessary condition
> for the
> > > monotheistic definition of deity is clearly absent in the rather random
> and
> > > uniform plasmic soup blown out of a Big Bang.
> > > [Ben 4] ah but before the Big Bang, when all that energy and matter was
> hypercompressed, well
> > > that fits the theory rather nicely doesn't it? Of course that would mean
> that in the process, the be-
> > > all end-all 'god' wouldhave been destroyed...
> > >
> > OI'll leave it up to Hermit to explain why the very idea of 'before' the
> genesis of a
> > matter/energy space/time universe is fallacious...
> > >
> > > > [Ben 3] Hmm gives whole new meaning to the idea that the soul departs
> the
> > > > body at death...
> > > [Joe 4] The DNA resides in the body for a long time after death before
> it degrades
> > > significantly.
> > > [Ben 4] That was an attempt at a bad joke on my part, referring to
> yourDNA-soul analogy and
> > > one of the more evolutionarily desperate-seeming side effects of sudden
> violent death in
> > > males...
> > >
> > You mean, of course, terminal ejaculation.
> > >
> > > -ben
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
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