Brent, I'm happy with this latest version too. If it wouldn't be too much trouble to manually delete my old nickname, I'd be grateful for that. Thanks for the clarification on links in statements. I'll do that soon.

Robin, Oh, when you were talking about 007, I thought you were talking about James Bond or something? ;) Hopefully, some day we'll have a way to move all support from an existing Nick Name to another one, and delete the no longer used one, and an ability to set a default, and so on. If you'd like I can do this move and delete your old nick name by hand in the DB. Yes, by all means include references to more material. There are links to some of my stuff in the 3 person "consciousness is real" camp. When more people join your camp, you will likely have to negotiate which are the best references, and so on. These statements are intended to be very brief and concise statements, even just abstracts, with references to more information for more detail and clarifications, and so on. On the edit page for statements, there is a link to a help page describing the wiki formatting and how to add URL links. I very much like the latest version. So how does this look: Name: Not Supernatural Title: The Hard Problem has nothing to do with the supernatural Statement: The American Heritage Dictionaries has this definition for supernatural[1]: ------------------------------ su·per·nat·u·ral adj: * Of or relating to existence outside the natural world. * Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces. * Of or relating to a deity. * Of or relating to the immediate exercise of divine power; miraculous. * Of or relating to the miraculous. n: * That which is supernatural. ------------------------------ We exclude all supernatural concepts and entities, such as spirits or souls that survive death, from our discussions of the hard problem. [1] "supernatural." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 20 Nov. 2007 fixall, This exclusionary language is just the statement of what we currently believe in this camp. We respect and highly value any different point of view you may hold, as a theory that could turn out to be the one that is true, proving us to be wrong, or that you could possibly convert us to your camp some day, and so on. With the Canonizer, the more diversity the better, so thanks for all your support. Brent Allsop

Brent, Thanks for the credit and the nickname tip. I note that nicknames are permanent, but if I can't delete the old one, is it possible to make the new one the default? (Just to save me from having to keep remembering to change it!) Would it be acceptable to put a link to my site in my statement text, saying something like "There is more on this position , but in accordance with the Canonizer rules, you should base your decision to join this camp, or not to do so, on this statement"? I see what you mean re that sentence. I was assuming that saying "We believe..." was enough, but it could be "softened" further. How about changing "have no place in any" to "are not appropriate in a"? Or to go a bit further still, we could say "We exclude all supernatural concepts and entities, such as spirits or souls that survive death, from our discussions of the hard problem." The "007." is missing off the end, to complete the citation date.

Robin, The problem I have with: "We believe that supernatural concepts and entities have no place in any discussion of the hard problem." is that it sounds to me like you are telling people with a different POV, or in some other camp, that they shouldn't be using supernatural concepts. Can you come up with another version that doesn't sound like it is telling people in other camps what to do? Is that the right thing to do? I like your new nick name much better. You can go to you camp statement here: http://test.canonizer.com/topic.asp/23/14 and change that support to use your new nick name. The broken '?' is an artifact of the open source wiki text parser we are using. That parser is trying to make all words with multiple upper case letters into links, but of course the Canonizer has no such functionality and we haven't yet removed this. So until we do, you must add a <nowiki> and </nowiki> around words with multiple upper case letters in them like this. Sorry about that, hopefully we'll get that fixed soon. I'm not sure what you mean about the 007? And I've just credit you another share for your continued help with all this. Brent

Brent, just noticed your version is missing "007." at the end.

Brent, You might think this is nit-picking, but "the hard problem has nothing to do with..." is rather imprecise. I feel my wording was better, and I'd be interested in your reasons for changing it. (Nickname changed from RobinF for transparency. When I clicked on the "?" following that in the preview I got Page not found.)

Robin, Yes this kind of rapid progress in the development of statements and beliefs of people, especially in relation to other bliefs, is the goal. Also, as I was telling fixall, we may believe that terms like "mystic" have no place in stating what we believe, but they may be entirely appropriate in the camps describing other points of view on this topic right? I'm mostly with you on this new proposed version for the brain only camp. I've cleaned things up a bit. Let us know if this is moving in the right direction: Name: Not Supernatural Title: The Hard Problem has nothing to do with the supernatural Statement: The American Heritage Dictionaries has this definition for supernatural[1]: ------------------------------ su·per·nat·u·ral adj: # Of or relating to existence outside the natural world. # Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces. # Of or relating to a deity. # Of or relating to the immediate exercise of divine power; miraculous. # Of or relating to the miraculous. n: # That which is supernatural. ------------------------------ We believe that the hard problem has nothing to do with supernatural concepts and entities. [1] "supernatural." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 20 Nov. 2

fixal, You said: "It is interesting that there is this attempt to nullify alternative viewpoints. It would seem that alternative views would be welcome in the spirit of true scientific research. Instead, the response is to negate the alternative viewpoint." The fundamental goal of the Canonizer, is to not "nullify alternative viewpoints". Instead, we seek to develop "camps" that cover all viewpoints. In the specification of what camps believe, and in their naming, they seek to distinguish themselves from other camps, and define what it is they believe. In the brain only camp, it is appropriate for them to use terminology that "nullifies" what other camps "believe". And it is perfectly appropriate for you to do the same thing in your camp statements. Thanks, Brent Allsop

fixall, The Canonizer system is still a prototype, and hence may still have problems. We are resolving all issues as fast as we can find out about them. Thank you for informing us that you continue to have replies disappear. When you submit a new post, or a reply, you should get a confirmation page indicating that the e-mail has been sent. If you get this, you should be able to immediately go to the forum page, and see your post there. If any of this fails, you can send an e-mail to support@canonizer.com and let us know as much as possible what happened so we can quickly find and resolve the issue. For your continued patience and trouble, which is adding value to the Canonizer, we are awarding you with a share of Canonizer LLC as a record of your help. For more information and disclaimers about these shares see: http://test.canonizer.com/topic.asp/4 Thanks! Brent Allsop

Brent: I think maybe I haven't made it clear that I don't agree with "dies with the brain". That implies that consciousness is alive in some sense, pre-death. My view is that, intersubjectively, consciousness never dies, while objectively, it was never alive. But this is not about me. IMHO, what this is really about is types of argument: some allow supernatural-type thinking, others don't, and this is one of the latter. So this statement should exclude the supernatural and not mention the brain or anything else. Come to think of it, that's a change rather than a clarification. Sorry about that, but I guess it's inevitable our thinking should evolve. Or, if not inevitable, then at least generally a good thing. :-) Here's a new suggestion. Title: Not supernatural. Statement: The American Heritage Dictionaries has this definition: "su·per·nat·u·ral adj. 1. Of or relating to existence outside the natural world. 2. Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces. 3. Of or relating to a deity. 4. Of or relating to the immediate exercise of divine power; miraculous. 5. Of or relating to the miraculous. n. That which is supernatural."[1] We believe that supernatural concepts and entities have no place in any discussion of the hard problem. [1] "supernatural." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 20 Nov. 2007.