I think Tom is right that the path to solving mysteries like this is often to look outward rather than inward. Part of the point of William James's somewhat mysterious "Stream of Consciousness" expositions was to point out that at the most basic level experience is a unified whole -> i.e. the experience of "the firecracker at the ball game after a win" is more basic than the experience "firecracker". While it is useful for some purposes, it is unnatural to break up experience and consider individual "experienced things" in isolation. Thus, there is novelty to be found not just in the difficult to discern differences between each firecracker, but also between firecrackers-in-context.
Eric On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 11:27 PM, Marcos <stalkingt...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 9:53 PM, Tom Johnson <t...@jtjohnson.com> wrote: >> Yes, but that firecracker -- as data not information -- needs to be >> understood in some context of space/time. A firecracker in my backyard >on a >> 4th of July afternoon is quite different than a firecracker of equal size >> throw at cops during a riot. >> >> Could it be that what you call a "observational/informational >gradient" is >> what I call context? > >No, I don't think so. The notion of "context" exists within the >domain of the cognitive, although within that domain, one might >imagine that there are domains of gradients of their own which exists >in the social sphere. > >But in this case, I'm talking at the level of raw data. In the same >way that potential and kinetic energy reflect or are symmetric each >other (in the sense that the total amount at any given time is >constant), that, similarly, that the total sum e (energy) + H >(information) always stays constant within a closed system. > >So in the given example, the actual physical, energetic vibrations are >turned into data by tickling the fine hairs of the human listener. >And, furthermore, it would seem that the brain was the universe's >answer to the "entropy problem" as we seem naturally inclined to >continue repeating explosion after explosion because at some level >deeper than the cognitive, the brain is cataloging all that data and >rewarding us (at least boys) for the novelty (in the >information-theoretic sense) that it confers with each explosion even >though there's hardly anything new at our own cognitive level. >Consciousness was nature's way of solving the problem of "the heat >death of the universe", or alternately, those universes which didn't >have observers simply died out long ago and we're one that remained. > >marcos > >============================================================ >FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > Eric Charles Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601
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