Turing the Gospel, ESP

[Peter Petto]

It was a bit like fingernails on a chalkboard (remember those?) for me when 
rj wrote:

>What if thought waves exist as substantive phenomena like
>sound or light waves, just that they are not empirically-discernible
>by any machines that we have so far invented? (Although, that
>lie detector test comes pretty close.)

I have a hard time seeing how lie detectors measure thought waves 
transmitted/received from person to person. They measure various aspects of 
the human metabolism. Perhaps many of these same aspects (or corresponding 
ones) are discernible by a careful observer or listener.

I think it is important to work hard to keep the aptness of a resonant 
metaphor from being taken in as fact rather than what it is -- 
interpretation or meaning. I think that this is a particular danger for 
literary types.

Of course there's an opposite danger when scientific types ignore meaning 
and non-objective values.

I keep wanting to get to Wilson's _Consilience_, a recent book that (based 
on its promotional blurbs and a few interviews with the author I read) 
seems to touch on these matters.