On Thu, Jun 23, 2005 at 10:43:50AM +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, Jun 23, 2005 at 12:01:16PM +1000, Russell Standish wrote: > > The alternative is that consciousness is a continuous property (or at > > least finely divided miltivalued), argued by people like Susan > > ..and by all of critical care medicine. > > > http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hs=aXM&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&biw=1172&q=critical+care+level+consciousness&btnG=Search
I did the Google search, but unfortunately I'm none the wiser as to how critical care spcecialists uses the term. However, I woudl wager that it is a 3rd person term, referring somehow to congitive ability, not a first person term meaning being aware of oneself and the surroundings. At least Greenfield is supposedly talking about the latter. It doesn't sound right to me. > > > Greenfield. This doesn't seem right to me. For one thing, this is not > > how the term is used in everyday language - you are either conscious > > or unconscious. I haven't seen one whisk of evidence that this naive > > folk approach has got it wrong. > > You aren't serious, are you? Common sense completely fails most of science. > Sure. But until the folk meaning of the term is shown to be inconsistent or meaningless, it is viable to use it. Science has a (sometimes annoying) habit of borrowing everyday terms and changing the meaning, which is quite likely in the case of critical care medicine (or in anaesthetics for that matter). Cheers > -- > Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> > ______________________________________________________________ > ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.leitl.org > 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics 0425 253119 (") UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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