On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 09:51:27PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: > On 8/22/2014 11:42 PM, Russell Standish wrote: > >On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 09:16:27AM -0700, meekerdb wrote: > >>If your altered state of consciousness has no self-awareness, is it > >>still "consciousness"? And there's self-consciousness, i.e. being > >>aware you are thinking. So it's not 'fading' qualia, it different > >>categories of consciousness. I'd say my dog has self-awareness, > >>e.g. he knows his name. But I'm not so sure he is self-conscious. > >>The koi in my pond are aware, but I doubt they are self-aware. > >> > >Just out of curiosity, where do you think my operational definition of > >consciousness being a member of the reference class of anthropic reasoning > >fits > >into your quadripartite classification? > > > >Is being a dog a valid state for the anthropic reference class? Being > >a koi? All I know is that most animals are not valid members of the > >reference class. Hence my "ants are not conscious" paper. > > ISTM that anyone applying the anthropic principle gets to choose any > reference class they are member of. I read your paper and you > conclude ants can't be conscious because then, as a member of the > conscious beings, I'd most likely be and ant - but I'm not. But why > doesn't it work as well for other properties? Ants aren't DNA based > because if they were, I, as a DNA based being, would most likely be > an ant - but I'm not an ant. >
I don't think that can be the case. I don't see how it can be anything to be like a tree, yet trees are clearly DNA-based beings. So you would get skewed results if you were to reason as though you could be a tree. The reference class cannot be larger than the class of conscious beings. Obviously it can be quite a bit smaller, but there must be a maximal reference class for which anthropic reasoning is valid, although it is quite controversial what it is - some suggest it may even be as small as those people capable of understanding the anthropic argument, a sizable fraction of which inhabits this list! But that smacks of parochialism, much like the notion of geocentrism. I just haven't found a convincing argument that the maximal reference class is not just the class of conscious organisms, of beings for whom there is a something it is like to be. But my question (which you haven't answered) is what you think this maximal reference class is from your four part classification of consciousness. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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.
