On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 01:09:38PM -0400, John Clark wrote: > On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 3:35 AM, Kim Jones <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Consciousness is “all or nothing”. > > > > Then why can't you remember the split second before you fall asleep? If > it's all or nothing why would anybody say "stay alert" instead of "stay > awake"? >
Probably because time (the psychological phenomena, not the physicist's coordinate) is fundamentally discrete. You remember the last moment that makes it into your long term memory. Also, for those who argue that consciousness must be some kind of continuous quantity, in my view it is more like the connectivity of a graph (or network to non-mathematical types). As you remove links from a fully connected network, at some point it falls into two pieces, and is not longer fully connected. Whilst this is just an analogy, I think there is something in this. Toffoli characterises conscious states by brain-wide correlations in neural activity, or "integrated information". Once you start suppressing neuronal activity neuron by neuron, at some point the activity becomes non-correlated as there is insufficient connectivity. That is the transition between consciousness and unconsiousness. I doubt Toffoli has the _answer_, but I do think think his idea might be part of the answer, and a fertile area of research. Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.
