Kelly Harmon wrote: > I think your discussing the functional aspects of consciousness. AKA, > the "easy problems" of consciousness. The question of how human > behavior is produced. > > My question was what is the source of "phenomenal" consciousness. > What is the absolute minimum requirement which must be met in order > for conscious experience to exist? So my question isn't HOW human > behavior is produced, but instead I'm asking why the mechanistic > processes that produce human behavior are accompanied by subjective > "first person" conscious experience. The "hard problem". Qualia. > > I wasn't asking "how is it that we do the things we do", or, "how did > this come about", but instead "given that we do these things, why is > there a subjective experience associated with doing them."
Do you suppose that something could behave just as humans do yet not be conscious, i.e. could there be a philosophical zombie? > > So none of the things you reference are relevant to the question of > whether a computer simulation of a human mind would be conscious in > the same way as a real human mind. If a simulation would be, then > what are the properties that those to two very dissimilar physical > systems have in common that would explain this mutual experience of > consciousness? The information processing? Brent > > > > On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 3:22 AM, Alberto G.Corona <agocor...@gmail.com> wrote: >> No. Consciousness is not information. It is an additional process that >> handles its own generated information. I you don´t recognize the >> driving mechanism towards order in the universe, you will be running >> on empty. This driving mechanism is natural selection. Things gets >> selected, replicated and selected again. >> >> In the case of humans, time ago the evolutionary psychologists and >> philosophers (Dennet etc) discovered the evolutionary nature of >> consciousness, that is double: For social animals, consciousness keeps >> an actualized image of how the others see ourselves. This ability is >> very important in order to plan future actions with/towards others >> members. A memory of past actions, favors and offenses are kept in >> memory for consciousness processing. This is a part of our moral >> sense, that is, our navigation device in the social environment. >> Additionally, by reflection on ourselves, the consciousness module can >> discover the motivations of others. >> >> The evolutionary steps for the emergence of consciousness are: 1) in >> order to optimize the outcome of collaboration, a social animal start >> to look the others as unique individuals, and memorize their own >> record of actions. 2) Because the others do 1, the animal develop a >> sense of itself and record how each one of the others see himself >> (this is adaptive because 1). 3) This primitive conscious module >> evolved in 2 starts to inspect first and lately, even take control of >> some action with a deep social load. 4) The conscious module >> attributes to an individual moral self every action triggered by the >> brain, even if it driven by low instincts, just because that´s is the >> way the others see himself as individual. That´s why we feel ourselves >> as unique individuals and with an indivisible Cartesian mind. >> >> The consciousness ability is fairly recent in evolutionary terms. This >> explain its inefficient and sequential nature. This and 3 explains why >> we feel anxiety in some social situations: the cognitive load is too >> much for the conscious module when he tries to take control of the >> situation when self image it at a stake. This also explain why when we >> travel we feel a kind of liberation: because the conscious module is >> made irrelevant outside our social circle, so our more efficient lower >> level modules take care of our actions >> >> > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---