Posted by maxx44 on November 23, 2003, at 23:22:48
In reply to What is consciousness? « Jonny Trigonometry, posted by Dr. Bob on November 21, 2003, at 18:56:10
seems 'consciousness' is best defined as 'self-aware' sensory event, with little to do with nervous systems. bacteria clearly exhibit this. viruses even seem adept, but i doubt one may find a nervous system in either. it seems an innate process of life. recently some 'artificial-intelligence' bunch, using 'probability calculus'obtained a patent relateing to 'consciousness'. i'll check my bookmarks and hope i saved the paper and forward the link. if not, a search should find it. perhaps a more proper question would be 'what is life?' that which may reproduce? crystalline substances do that. but are they conscious? an 'animist' would say yes, but they'd say the same about the nail that flattened your tire. the best explanation i've seen comes from the american indian paradigm termed 'nagualism'. in that view, space-time, life, etc. is just one 'set-point' in an infinite sea of totally separate sets. anything for which there is a word is simply part of our set. when our 'unknowable' part partakes of any set, it swiftly learns, by what rupert sheldrake would call 'morphic resonance' the 'view of the set-point'. so consciousness is then considered a learned social event. this is consistent with dr. wheeler's 'interpretive participator' quantum model. oddly, it's also ubiquitous in global aboriginal belief systems, and eastern ones as well. and the kicker is you always find yourself dealing with 'initial conditions'---nobody even wants to get near that deal---but 'consciousness' does appear, to the quantist, or the shaman, as learned from the pre-existing set. who knows?
poster:maxx44
thread:282271
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20031113/msgs/283049.html