Hi Stathis, Colin > The bogus logic I detect in posts around this area... > 'Humans are complex and are conscious' > 'Humans were made by a complex biosphere' > therefore > 'The biosphere is conscious' > > Stathis That conclusion is spurious, but it is the case that non-conscious evolutionary processes can give rise to very elaborate "technology", namely life, which goes against your theory that only consciousness can produce new technology.
Colin This point is poised on the cliff edge of loaded word meanings and their use with the words 'sufficient' and 'necessary'. By technology I mean novel artifacts resulting from the trajectory of causality including human scientists. By that definition 'life', in the sense you infer, is not technology. The resulting logical loop can be thus avoided. There is a biosphere that arose naturally. It includes complexity of sufficient depth to have created observers within it. Those observers can produce technology. Douglas Adams (bless him) had the digital watch as a valid product of evolution - and I agree with him - it's just that humans are necessarily involved in its causal ancestry. COLIN > That assumes that complexity itself (organisation of information) is the > origin of consciousness in some unspecified, unjustified way. This > position is completely unable to make any empirical predictions > about the > nature of human conscousness (eg why your cortex generates qualia > and your > spinal chord doesn't - a physiologically proven fact). STATHIS > Well, why does your eye generate visual qualia and not your big toe? It's because the big toe lacks the necessary machinery. > Colin I am afraid you have your physiology mixed up. The eye does NOT generate visual qualia. Your visual cortex generates it based on measurements in the eye. The qualia are manufactured and simultaneously projected to appear to come from the eye (actually somewhere medial to them). It's how you have 90degrees++ peripheral vison. The same visual qualia can be generated without an eye (hallucination/dream). Some blind (no functioning retina) people have a visual field for numbers. Other cross-modal mixups can occur in synesthesia (you can hear colours, taste words). You can have a "phantom big toe" without having any big toe at all....just because the cortex is still there making the qualia. If you swapped the sensory nerves in two fingers the motor cortex would drive finger A and it would feel like finger B moved and you would see finger A move. The sensation is in your head, not the periphery. It's merely projected at the periphery. cheers colin --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
