AT writes: : Thanks Robert; I for one need to let all this sink in for a while, reread, : think some more, come at it in a different way, find a new angle, a new : correlative, who knows. I'm not sure what to say really...but let me suggest : this. : : Take the number 4, for example. A child who learns about numbers learns that : seeing 4 marbles, 4 gummi bears, 4 sticks (put close together), signifies : something similar. It is the idea of "4"--something present neither in sticks : , : gummi bears or marbles, yet something exemplified and made present by the : instantiantion, in front of the child's eyes, of 4 things arranged close : together. Initially the idea of number is the idea of 4 objects, recalled at : will. The objects themselves recede from importance and later only the idea : remains. But what actually remains? Whatever remains is perhaps what a number : : is. Could it be that what the child perceives is a pattern? A pattern that the child comes to associate with the glyph 4, which is also a pattern? This does not, of course, simplify the problem, but it might lead to the conclusion that numbers are not that different from other patterns that we recognize---like circles and faces and the tune of "Pop Goes the Weasel"? My suspicion is that when we deal with patterns we are dealing with information and that information is neither matter nor a mental state. (At this point I should make some sort of reference to Shannon's communication theory.) Patterns exist without a perceiver---_pace_ Berkeley---but perceptions of patterns, of course, don't. And that brings me back to computer programs, which can be perceived as patterns (since they can be perceived as numbers) and which when put into a computer (along with data which are also a pattern) cause the computer to produce still another pattern, that is, another number? On this view I guess we have matter and minds and information as the tertium quid. I remain puzzled, Peter -- Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH EMAIL: junger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx URL: http://samsara.law.cwru.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html