Richard Loosemore wrote: > Harry Chesley wrote: >> A related question: How do you explain the fact that we sometimes >> are aware of qualia and sometimes not? You can perform the same >> actions paying attention or "on auto pilot." In one case, qualia >> "manifest," while in the other they do not. Why is that? > > I actually *really* like this question: I was trying to compose an > answer to it while lying in bed this morning. > > ... > > So when I don't remember anything about those towns, from a few > minutes ago on my road trip, is it because (a) the attentional > mechanism did not bother to lay down any episodic memory traces, so I > cannot bring back the memories and analyze them, or (b) that I was > actually not experiencing any qualia during that time when I was on > autopilot? > > I believe that the answer is (a), and that IF I can stopped at any > point during the observation period and thought about the experience > I just had, I would be able to appreciate the last few seconds of > subjective experience. > > ... > > Does this seem to make sense so far, though?
It sounds reasonable. I would suspect (a) also, and that the reason is that these are circumstances where remembering is a waste of resources, either because the task being done on auto-pilot is so well understood that it won't need to be analyzed later, and/or because there is another task in the works at the same time that has more need for the memory resources. Note that your supposition about remembering the last few seconds if interrupted during an auto-pilot task is experimentally verifiable fairly easily. ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
