On 11/30/2025 4:48 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Sat, Nov 29, 2025 at 5:42 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]>
wrote:
/> do you have a sharp dividing line between conscious and
unconscious? /
*No, that's why I can't remember my exact instant of
consciousnessbefore I fell asleep last night.*
*>> I'm not going to give you a definition because any
definition I give you would be made of words, and I have no
doubt you would demand a further definition of at least one of
those words, and round and round we'd go. But there is
something much better than a definition, an example; a rock is
not intelligent, Albert Einstein was, and a bacteria is
somewhere between those two extremes. *
**
> /And doesn't exactly the same assertion serve as an example of
consciousness? /
*Yes.*
/> yet intelligence and consciousness aren't the same thing./
*But you can't have one without the other.... probably. You definitely
can't have intelligence without consciousness, *
Sure you can. If you're good at any sport, say tennis, then most of
what you do when playing is intelligent, but if you consciously think
about it you'll screw it up. You only think about it when trying to learn.
*maybe you could have consciousness without intelligence, but I doubt
it. *
Again I point out "consciousness" is ambiguous, used to refer to related
but different things. Something can be conscious of their immediate
environment, have feelings, and react to it, but if they don't learn I'd
say they are not intelligent. And some people who are equally
conscious, may differ greatly in intelligence.
**
*>> I do not know what "physical likeness" means, at least not
the way you seem to be using the term. Please enlighten me. *
/> Better I'll give you and example. Albert Einstein was
physically like me and a rock is not./
*I agree that physically you're more like Einstein than you are to a
rock, but most rocks contain all the elements that your body contains,
so you are not completely dissimilar. And the genome of a banana is
60% like your genome, does that mean a banana is 60% as conscious as
you are? Maybe, but I doubt it, and it certainly is not 60% as
intelligent. *
*>>>> that's the only way Darwinian natural selection could
ever have produced consciousness, and I know for a fact that
it did.*
/>>> You can't even get your inferences consistent./
*>>Please point out my error.*
/> Here's the Venn diagram (conscious (intelligence)) of
"...intelligence implies consciousness (3 lines above).
Yes,..."But earlier (line 5, 11/28/2025 1326) you wrote, "//...if
consciousness wasn't an inevitable byproduct of intelligence..."
implying the Venn diagram (intelligence (consciousness)). To
believe both is to assert they are identical, which I doubt. /
*First of all, when I say "intelligent" I mean "intelligent behavior"
because behavior is the only way we can judge if something is
intelligent or not. Maybe rocks are smarter than Einstein but are shy
and don't like to brag so they stay quiet, but I doubt it. And I
insist that intelligence implies consciousness *
See above.
*_but_ I don't insist that consciousness implies intelligence,
although I think it very likely. And if X implies Y and Y implies
Xthen X and Y may not be identical but they are logically equivalent. *
*>> I sincerely believe it is nonsenseto try to specify where
a mind is located because that can only be done with a noun,
and you are not a noun, you are an adjective, you are the way
that matter behaves when it is organized in a Brentmeekerian
way. Right now there is only one chunk of matter in the
observable universe that is organized in that way, but that
need not always be the case. *
/> So you think the same mind can be located two different places
at the same time. /
*I think that a brain alwayshas a definite position but a mind does
not, and a mind is what a brain does so it doesn't even make sense to
ask where a mind is located. It would be like asking, where is the
location of "rapid"? And if 2 brains are identical then there is only
one mind. *
/> Can it be thinking two different thoughts? /
*I don't know what the referrent to the pronoun "it" *
Even though you wrote a paragraph in between it still refers to the
subject of my previous sentence, "...the same mind...".*
*
*in the above is butif 2 brains are thinking different thoughts then
they are no longeridentical, and so there are 2 minds.*
*
*
/> your/ thought is localized in /your/ brain
*It is an undisputed fact that your brain is localized inside of a box
made of bone, but do you THINK that THOUGHT a lot?*
There are an infinitude of true propositions which I have never thought
even once.
*For most of human history people didn't even THINK a brain had
anything to do with THOUGHT, the ancient Egyptians carefully preserved
every part of the body _except_ for the brain, they THOUGHT it was
just uninteresting goo and threw it away. If you THINK a THOUGHT is
not in your brain then how can a THOUGHT that you're THINKING be in
your brain?*
By your being mistaken. Just like those Egyptians.
*>> Asking where a mind is located is like asking where yellow
or fast or big is located. *
/> Those are attributes of things,/
*Yes exactly, and mind is also the attribute of a thing, a brain. A
mind is what a brain does *
And hence it is the same place as the brain doing it. Just because
attributes are not the same as the objects having them doesn't imply
they have no location. You are trying to "move the goal posts". I've
never claimed that mind was the same thing as a brain. Only that as an
attribute of the brain it has the same location.
Brent
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