Mark Waser wrote:
An excellent question from Harry . . . .
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.
So . . . . what if the *you* that you/we speak of is simply the
attentional mechanism? What if qualia are simply the way that other
brain processes appear to you/the attentional mechanism?
Why would "you" be experiencing qualia when you were on autopilot? It's
quite clear from experiments that human's don't "see" things in their
visual field when they are concentrating on other things in their visual
field (for example, when you are told to concentrate on counting
something that someone is doing in the foreground while a man in an ape
suit walks by in the background). Do you really have qualia from stuff
that you don't sense (even though your sensory apparatus picked it up,
it was clearly discarded at some level below the conscious/attentional
level)?
Yes, I did not mean to imply that all unattended stimuli register in
consciousness. Clearly there are things that are simply not seen, even
when they are in the visual field.
But I would distinguish between that and a situation where you drive for
50 miles and do not have a memory afterwards of the places you went
through. I do not think that we "do not see" the road and the towns and
other traffic in the same sense that we "do not see" an unattended
stimulus in a dual task experiment, for example.
But then, there are probably intermediate cases.
Some of the recent neural imaging work is relevant in this respect. I
will think some more about this whole issue.
Richard Loosemore
----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Loosemore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, November 17, 2008 1:46 PM
Subject: **SPAM** Re: [agi] A paper that actually does solve the problem
of consciousness
Harry Chesley wrote:
On 11/14/2008 9:27 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote:
I completed the first draft of a technical paper on consciousness the
other day. It is intended for the AGI-09 conference, and it can be
found at:
http://susaro.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/draft_consciousness_rpwl.pdf
Good paper.
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.
This is what I started referring to (in a longer version of the paper)
as a "Consciousness Holiday".
In fact, if start unpacking the idea of what we mean by conscious
experience, we start to realize that it inly really exists when we
look at it. It is not even logically possible to think about
consciousness - any form of it, including *memories* of the
consciousness that I had a few minutes ago, when I was driving along
the road and talking to my companion without bothering to look at
several large towns that we drove through - without applying the
analysis mechanism to the consciousness episode.
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.
The real reply to your question goes much much deeper, and it is
fascinating because we need to get a handle on creatures that probably
do not do any reflective, language-based philosophical thinking (like
guinea pigs and crocodiles). I want to say more, but will have to set
it down in a longer form.
Does this seem to make sense so far, though?
Richard Loosemore
-------------------------------------------
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/?&;
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
-------------------------------------------
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/?&;
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
-------------------------------------------
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
