Consciousness

Think of a person of the opposite sex. Hold them in your mind. That person you are thinking of is the person you love, so if you're married then let's hope the visage in your mind is that of your dear spouse! I'm right, aren't I? :)

Now consider this question about this wonderful, lovely person you have in your mind: Are they conscious?

Perhaps a human being could be unconscious and behave in exactly the same way as they would if sentient, conscious beings. Actually, this is not as bizarre as it sounds. This would certainly explain why my managers at work behave the odd ways that they do. For all we know, you and I are the only people on this accursed planet who are conscious. The rest are just weird ghosts. You know I'm not a ghost because I'm questioning whether other people are conscious. And you know you're not a ghost! A ghost couldn't do that... could they?

Can the consciousness be explained? David Chalmers, a philosopher from some grandiose university in England identified two puzzles of consciousness:

1) The Easy Problem: mapping conscious experience to neurone activity in the brain - and

2) The HARD Problem: explaining the subjective experiences, for example, the blueness of the sky. What is blueness? What is the redness of a rose? What is REDNESS???

To tackle the hard problem, Chalmers proposes that, just as electric charge is a fundamental property of nature that explains some aspects of the natural world, so consciousness is also a fundamental property of nature. Consciousness could be thought of as a physical aspect of something, like its charge. Every object as this consciousness charge that defines how conscious that object is. The simpler the object, the less conscious that object is.

I don't believe that explanation. Consciousness has more to do with information than fundamental physics.

If you look at a computer screen, the alphanumeric characters on the screen are not a fundamental property of nature, they are caused by electronics, the circuits inside the computer generate these alphanumerics. Similarly consciousness is merely the circuits of the brain painting vivid patterns of awareness in our own heads.

Marvin Minsky surmises that consciousness is caused by one part of the brain monitoring another. I agree: structure (of the brain) not some supernatural entity, is behind consciousness, just as structure (of your computer hardware and software) is behind the displaying of this electronic web page you see before your very eyes.

Our only tool for conveying our conscious experiences, the redness of red, for example, is language, and language is not designed for this task. Is my red your blue? Consciousness will always be a mystery shrouded in words.




Bill W. and Jim debate consciousness!

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From:	MadPole	Subject:	Ghosts...	2001-02-03 07:19:22
From:	one_wingedangel	Subject:	consciousness	2001-12-14 13:39:50
From:	one_wingedangel	Subject:	consciousness	2001-12-14 13:40:10
From:	Cyber Scribe	Subject:	The Virtual making sense of the Real?	2002-01-22 16:45:06
From:	zen nudist	Subject:	consciousness	2002-06-20 15:55:23
From:	Clayton Carter	Subject:	Question?	2003-09-13 12:31:18
From:	ivan	Subject:	concious computers, part 1	2003-09-28 22:08:22
From:	ivan	Subject:	concious computers, part 2	2003-09-28 22:10:44
From:	ivan	Subject:	concious computers, part 3	2003-09-28 22:13:13
From:	ivan	Subject:	consious computers, part 4	2003-09-28 22:15:10
From:	ivan	Subject:	concious computers, part 5	2003-09-28 22:16:33
From:	ivan	Subject:	consious computers, part 6 (final, phew)	2003-09-28 22:17:25
From:	nathan	Subject:	consciousness	2003-10-16 06:25:11
From:	Clayton Carter	Subject:	Something is typing, and I am that	2003-11-09 13:45:43
From:	Ivan	Subject:	i disagree	2003-11-12 04:24:36
From:	Clayton Carter	Subject:	Yahoo!	2003-11-15 02:24:58
From:	Clayton	Subject:	..... again.....	2003-11-15 02:27:55
From:	Raistath	Subject:	Computers as Life1	2003-12-13 08:27:03
From:	Raistath	Subject:	Computers as life2	2003-12-13 08:27:36
From:	Raistath	Subject:	Computers as Life3	2003-12-13 08:39:59
From:	john wesley	Subject:	consciousness	2003-12-23 11:03:20
From:	ivan	Subject:	snails again...	2004-02-01 01:12:07
From:	Clayton Carter	Subject:	misunderstood.	2005-07-01 21:09:11

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