On Wednesday, February 4, 2015, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 2/3/2015 11:57 PM, Jason Resch wrote: > > > On Wednesday, February 4, 2015, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: >> On 2/3/2015 9:12 PM, Jason Resch wrote: >>> >>> Well the question "is something conscious?" is binary, like "is something alive?". However there is a great spectrum of possible living entities, and a massive gulf that separates the simplest life forms from the most complex life forms. I think the same is true of consciousness. The mars rover might be conscious, but its consciousness might be as simple as a bacterium's biology is compared to a human's. >>> >>> That seems inconsistent with being "binary", like "being alive". First, being alive isn't "binary". Are viruses alive? Prions? Cigarettes? >> >> Any of those things are either alive or they aren't (according to some theory of liveness). >> >> So you simply define "alive" to be all or nothing by invoking some "theory of liveness" - however arbitrarily you have to draw the line. Not a very defensible position. > > What are we arguing about? We both accept consciousness may come in many different forms. > > Alive / Dead, Conscious / Not conscious > > It's like Positive / Non positive in regards to the natural numbers (non negative integers). > > A natural number is either 0 or positive. If a number is positive it says nothing of its magnitude other than it is not 0. > > So it is with consciousness. Do you agree? > > No, because I don't think it's one dimensional. I think that there may be qualitatively different forms of consciousness which will not be commensurable, that don't fit on a single scale. Already the split brain person gives and example, half the brain is verbal and constructs an inner narrative which is what most people think of as consciousness. But the other half is aware of vision and identifying images and able to draw and imagine. Is it as conscious as the verbal half? I don't think they can be placed on a scale to compare them. They're both consciousness>0 but they lie on different dimensions.
Of course it's not one dimensional. My example was just for illustration that you can have differentiation despite using an adjective that has a binary meaning. In any case I think you see my point that you can draw a parallel that consciousness > 0 = consciousness, while consciousness = 0 is not conscious. Jason > > Brent > > -- > 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. > -- 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.
