Thanks for the considered reply, Paul.

I do not mean to offend with the term 'follower'; it was a result of my frustration at the apparant one-sidedness of Dick's debating in this forum.

Harv has made many a good point that the good Dr. seems to run away from; plus he seems to run from letting logical analysis play out in debate when I try. I guess I was concerned that Paul and Aurino had adopted a dogmatic religious-like closed-mindedness and evasion of critical analysis also. Thanks Paul for restoring my faith in peoples' willingness to allow debate to find the solutions.

Just for the moment my comment is:
sounds like the section in the "Godel, Escher, Bach" book on 'strange loops'.

"Thought happens" does not solve this; it just implies that thought is mechanical and that you are a machine. Even if you are a machine, you 'machine' exist.

Even more minimally, "thought happens" involves a verb "to happen", which means a 'change'; so you are still left with knowing that this 'change' exists. You are still left with something existing, even if 'I' is just a 'change' called "thought happens".

So what does it mean "to know" that you exist (or know anything)? Any attempt to find out what "knowing" is presupposes "knowing". Thus you are in a loop here. And the 'loop' loops loop, that is: the loop 'knows' (loop) that it knows (loop). So you've ended out with a 3-in-1 loop; which I have suggested is what existence is like: to exist is to be 3-in-1, it would seem. Self-referent.

• This loop may be a/the boundary - jisbond - November 11, 2001 - 15:43 UTC
• Strange loops don't close up - pmartin - November 11, 2001 - 21:51 UTC
  • Puzzles - dolphin - November 12, 2001 - 06:41 UTC
    • Question for Paul, - dolphin - November 12, 2001 - 07:04 UTC
      • computer use error - dolphin - November 12, 2001 - 07:10 UTC
    • Question for Paul, - dolphin - November 12, 2001 - 07:07 UTC
      • Whew!! - pmartin - November 12, 2001 - 19:31 UTC
        • Limits of Mathematics - dolphin - November 17, 2001 - 06:26 UTC