On Tuesday, September 18, 2012 2:16:25 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: > > > > On Sep 18, 2012, at 12:53 PM, meekerdb <[email protected] <javascript:>> > wrote: > > On 9/18/2012 10:31 AM, Jason Resch wrote: > > No it is absolutely necessary. If you had no knowledge regarding what you > were seeing, no qualia at all, you would be blind and dysfunctional. > > You might cite blund sighr as a counter example, but actually i think it > is evidence of modularity if mind. Those with blind sight appear to have a > disconnect between the visual processing parts of their brain and others. > For example, they may still have reflexes, like the ability to avoid > obsticles or catch a thrown ball, but the language center of their brain is > disconnected, and so the part of the brain that talks says it can't see. > > > I agree. But it raises a question about the woman who feels pain but > doesn't care. Who is it that doesn't care? Obviously the conscious person > who tells you they don't care. But is there another, inarticulate person > who feels the pain? or does care? > > > Brent, > > Good question, and a scary thought. > > I think this might be likely in the case of a fully split brain, but > correspondingly less likely the smaller the isolated (disconnected) part of > the brain is. > > Unconsciousness under anesthesia results from brain regions becoming > isolated from each other. Maybe they are still conscious but cut off from > the memory, motion control, and speaking areas, so we have no evidence of > the consciousness of the sub-regions. > > Jason >
That's where the concepts of level and depth of qualia come in. For something to rise to the top level of human awareness means a lot. It may not mean as much to swat a mosquito. Would the experience of being a mosquito calibrate so that it's lifetime (short in our terms) seemed long to them? Do mosquito children mourn the loss of their swatted parents? I doubt it. They may very well have experiences that we wouldn't dream of, but the depth - the gravitas of human consciousness is either much greater than theirs is objectively, or it will just always seem that way anthropically from our perspective. Either way, we don't care about the mosquito so much, unless we take certain Eastern philosophies to their most literal extreme. My guess is that their qualia is orders of magnitude less significant. They may feel pain, but like the woman whose experience of pain has been sub-personalized, they may not care so much. The cohesiveness of the qualia - the figurative height of the tower of privacy and the enormous history of intentional significance which built it since the beginning of time...that is what makes this whole thing liveable. That's what keeps us from weeping for the grated carrots and avoiding eating our own foot for a snack. Craig > Brent > > -- > 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]<javascript:> > . > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] <javascript:>. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/T_wX_SkcTIQJ. 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.
