What is "Mind?"

The following is another difficulty with the principle of least time, and one which people who do not like this kind of a theory could never stomach. With Snell’s theory we can “understand” light. Light goes along, it sees a surface, it bends because it does something at the surface. The idea of causality, that it goes from one point to another, and another, and so on, is easy to understand. But the principle of least time is a completely different philosophical principle about the way nature works. Instead of saying it is a causal thing, that when we do one thing, something else happens, and so on, it says this: we set up the situation, and light decides which is the shortest time, or the extreme one, and chooses that path. But what does it do, how does it find out? Does it smell the nearby paths, and check them against each other? The answer is, yes, it does, in a way. That is the feature which is, of course, not known in geometrical optics, and which is involved in the idea of wavelength; the wavelength tells us approximately how far away the light must “smell” the path in order to check it. It is hard to demonstrate this fact on a large scale with light, because the wavelengths are so terribly short. But with radiowaves, say 3-cm waves, the distances over which the radiowaves are checking are larger. If we have a source of radiowaves, a detector, and a slit, as in Fig. 26–13, the rays of course go from S to D because it is a straight line, and if we close down the slit it is all right—they still go. But now if we move the detector aside to D′, the waves will not go through the wide slit from S to D′, because they check several paths nearby, and say, “No, my friend, those all correspond to different times.” On the other hand, if we prevent the radiation from checking the paths by closing the slit down to a very narrow crack, then there is but one path available, and the radiation takes it! With a narrow slit, more radiation reaches D′ than reaches it with a wide slit!

One can do the same thing with light, but it is hard to demonstrate on a large scale. The effect can be seen under the following simple conditions. Find a small, bright light, say an unfrosted bulb in a street light far away or the reflection of the sun in a curved automobile bumper. Then put two fingers in front of one eye, so as to look through the crack, and squeeze the light to zero very gently. You will see that the image of the light, which was a little dot before, becomes quite elongated, and even stretches into a long line. The reason is that the fingers are very close together, and the light which is supposed to come in a straight line is spread out at an angle, so that when it comes into the eye it comes in from several directions. Also you will notice, if you are very careful, side maxima, a lot of fringes along the edges too. Furthermore, the whole thing is colored. All of this will be explained in due time, but for the present it is a demonstration that light does not always go in straight lines, and it is one that is very easily performed.

We tried to take advantage of Richard's talent for clarity by getting him to critique the technical presentations that we made in our product introductions. Before the commercial announcement of the Connection Machine CM-1 and all of our future products, Richard would give a sentence-by-sentence critique of the planned presentation. "Don't say `reflected acoustic wave.' Say [echo]." Or, "Forget all that `local minima' stuff. Just say there's a bubble caught in the crystal and you have to shake it out." Nothing made him angrier than making something simple sound complicated.

The theory of evolution is a good example for the word "natural" in supernatural. "Super" in supernatural is like "meta" in metaphysics. It means that it is "above" natural and "above" physics.

Ed: I generally don't "believe" in things... but I also suspect you are not using these words the same way I would, perhaps you could also provide what you mean by "causes" and by "causality" and how they are a part of science.

IMO, as yanqui seems to suggest, cause / causality appear to be core ideas that science uses to concretely link things to each other and explain change. Associations / correlations are just too flaccid for hard sciences. Findings seemingly determining causality constitute a gold standard in the sciences, from what I’ve seen. Without causality (explanation of how one thing predictably gives rise to another), science would amount to description for the most part.

Show your work

Nothing made him angrier than making something simple sound complicated.

Take Eyonkees drift about the "interpreter," a function believed to "originate" in the left prefrontal cortex.

What does that mean, in our common usage of the word? Does it mean that the interpreter "caused" the pre-frontal cortex? Who would believe that? Is he saying that the pre-frontal cortex caused, gave rise to, birthed or in some way created the interpreter by way of mechanical brain function that occurred BEFORE the interpreter chimes in.

The "God of the gaps" argument goes something like this:

1) Science has thus far failed to account for phenomenon X.
2) I think that science won't manage to produce such an account.
3) Therefore, God is responsible for X.

"But where's the horse?"

Materialists are frustrated by the question, because

as Madbolter suggested. the million dollar question is: Why don't they?

how would you prove that germs and not nagas cause stomach illness because of dirty water?

Not everybody needs to understand everything.