On 15 August 2014 06:51, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 8/14/2014 6:45 AM, Pierz wrote: > > That is a weird assumption to me and completely contrary to my own > intuition. Certainly a person born and kept alive in sensory deprivation > will be extremely limited in the complexity of the mental states s/he can > develop, but I would certainly expect that such a person would have > consciousness, ie., that there is something it would be like to be such a > person. Indeed I expect that such a person would suffer horribly. Such a > conclusion requires no mystical view of consciousness. It is based purely > on biology - we are programmed with biological expectations/predispositions > which when not met, cause us to suffer. As much as the brain can't be > separated completely from other matter, it *does* seem to house > consciousness in a semi-autonomous fashion. > > So how did you suffer in the womb? >
But there's a lot of environmental interaction in the womb. You're undercutting your own case! To do a 180 degree, it would make more sense to claim that consciousness requires an environment because even before we're born we're already getting plenty of stimuli. You need to imagine a person put into an artificial womb with no light or sound etc from the moment they start to develop a nervous system, and consider whether that person would be conscious. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
