Hi Jason Resch I would define consciousness as perception, either internal or external, by any of the senses.
So it is an activity, a verb, not a thing or noun. [Roger Clough], [[email protected]] 12/24/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Jason Resch Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-12-22, 16:21:17 Subject: Re: How visual images are produced in the brain. Was Dennett rightafter all ? On Sat, Dec 22, 2012 at 2:57 PM, meekerdb wrote: On 12/22/2012 11:36 AM, Jason Resch wrote: As to how computation might lead to consciousness, I think it helps to start with a well-defined definition of consciousness.? Take dictionary.com's definition: "awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc." Well what is awareness?? dictionary.com defines it as: "having knowledge" dictionary.com's simplest non-circular definition of knowledge is simply "information". As discussed earlier, you can have information in the Shannon sense, but that is just measure over different possible messages.? For it to be information *about* something, to be knowledge, it has to be grounded in the ability to act. Right.? But how do you define act?? I think changing states within the process is sufficient.? That is to say, a brain in a vat, an AI in a virtual reality, a person dreaming, etc. can all be conscious even though they have no externally visible actions.? All the necessary action is internal to the mind itself. ? ? This means that an aware system in the GoL must be able to interact with it's environment based on its knowledge. The Turing machine in the GoL could of course run an emulation of any mind in any virtual reality.? The mind would never know its true incarnation is a vast grid of cells changing states.? It is a little reminiscent of the holographic principal and how it might apply to ourselves: "In a larger and more speculative sense, the theory suggests that the entire universe can be seen as a two-dimensional information structure "painted" on the cosmological horizon, such that the three dimensions we observe are only an effective description at macroscopic scales and at low energies." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle ? Jason -- 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. -- 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.
