> On 29 Nov 2014, at 1:37 pm, LizR <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hi Brent
>
> I seem to remember saying that I thought perhaps consciousness is something
> like "awareness of yourself and your environment" and asking if you had a
> better definition a couple of days ago. Did you reply? I don't recall seeing
> anything.
>
> If not - any ideas?
Consciousness is what makes qualia possible. There are no qualia without
consciousness. Producing qualia is what consciousness "does". So consciousness
is the "field" in which qualia exist. A quale is merely an event that I notice.
Everything experienced carries a value which goes into my personal lookup
table. I can then quickly recognise stuff the next time it comes along. So
already, we can see that the "purpose" of consciousness is to accelerate
awareness via embedded patterns of recogntion: memory. Intelligence on it's own
cannot encode enough information quickly enough to aid survival. It's too slow.
an amoeba has intelligence but the poor bloody things get swallowed by
paramecia all the time. They just don't learn. Consciousness revs the engine at
a higher rate so the knowledge bedding-down process happens a whole lot quicker.
So, I prefer to define what consciousness is by what it does. I don't think
there is one word that covers it.
Kim
--
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.
