Yes, allegedly from Heraclitus, ?You can never step into the same river twice?, and a variant by one of his disciples: ?You cannot step into the same river even once" - but we may be getting into deep water <g>
While we're with philosphers:-
I wouldn't want to get into Erwin Schr?dinger's view of consciousness here, but some might be interested to google for info about it. Here's a snippet:
"...inconceiveable as it seems to ordinary reason, you ? and all other conscious beings as such ? are all in all. Hence, this life of yours... is, in a certain sense, the whole..."
Very interesting. Even if one disagrees, it's worth considering how a powerful mind, trained and proficient in modern age science, could arrive at such a viewpoint.
As I've implied elsewhere, I think he was on the right track. I await the science that either proves or disproves it.
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Re: Free wilI, I wrote: "I have a feeling that chaos theory would have something to say about it"
OK, try this:
http://mh.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/28/2/78(Scroll down to 'CHAOS THEORY AND FREE WILL')
'...Complexity theory does not therefore solve the problem of free will in a deterministic universe, unless what we are worried about is not that our decisions are caused, but that they are predictable.
The attempt to solve the free will problem through complexity theory has some parallels with earlier attempts to solve the problem through the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics and the randomness of some quantum events. If there is true randomness in quantum events, and if quantum events are effective parts of the causal chains leading to decisions, then these decisions are not causally determined and unpredictable. This does, however, not give us the kind of free will that we want. Instead of having our decisions determined by inflexible causal chains, we now have them determined by random quantum events. There is still no room for the uncaused, but clearly not random agency that we seem to experience when we make decisions with our free will.
In the same way free will is not saved by being the result of complex causal chains, instead of simple ones. There would still be nothing free about it.'
