On 15 Aug 2014, at 02:24, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/14/2014 4:58 PM, LizR wrote:
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.
A fetus does get some environmental interaction, but I don't see how
that proves it is necessary. It might be interesting to look at
those few sad cases in which women have been in a coma during the
latter part of their pregnancy. Presumably the fetus would have
received less stimulus although there still would have been some and
it would be hard to tell whether a recently born baby was more or
less conscious.
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.
I think they would be severely deficient. Remember I think there
can be degrees of consciousness, while Bruno thinks it's all-or-
nothing.
It is all or nothing, but there is a variety of consciousness state.
It is like being positive, which is all-or-nothing, despite some very
little positive real numbers can be close negative real numbers.
You cannot be half conscious, you can be completely drunk, tough, and
quite disconnected from you mundane consciousness, and plausibly with
a notion of numbness for such case.
Unconsciousness is not a first person experience.
I think that even a "wolf-child" that grows up without learning
speech has a qualitatively different and lesser consciousness.
Qualitatively different, sure. But lesser? I would not be astonished
that we would have grown a larger part for smells, and might also feel
before other earthquake and things like that.
I think we have some empirical evidence. If kittens are raised in
complete darkness they don't develop vision.
That might be true for mammals, but not for insects. Human babies can
walk and swim at birth, but forget that instinctive ability, and we
are wired to learn things.
Bruno
Brent
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