On 12/1/2017 5:21 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 December 2017 at 00:58, Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 12/1/2017 4:46 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 2 December 2017 at 00:06, Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 12/1/2017 3:48 PM, David Nyman wrote:
Another aspect of this is that if, in imagination, you
progressively reduce the duration of your effective short
term memory, at some point you will intuit that you have
become effectively 'unconscious', or at least
un-self-conscious, as you will be unable to imagine
formulating an articulate thought or possibly even
assembling a coherent series of sense impressions or intuitions.
Including the coherent thought that you have become
effectively 'unconscious'.
Yes indeed. Of course you realised that I meant "at some point
you will intuit" only with reference to the relevant point in the
thought experiment, not to the imagined situation itself. In the
latter case my contention was that "at some (i.e. the
corresponding) point" you would in effect have become incapable
of coherently intuiting even the thought of your 'lost
consciousness', as you suggest.
Jeff Hawkins discusses this in his book "On Intelligence". He
calls his model of intelligence memory+prediction and it is based
more on brain neurophysiology and research than on computation
(although he's a computer guy, inventor the Palm Pilot).
Yes, that's interesting. From the evolutionary standpoint, leaving
aside distinctions of phenomenal versus 'access' consciousness, one
might speculate that the primary utility of conscious deliberation is
that of more accurate prediction of the future and consequently
improved individual and species survivability.
In Hawkins model the lower layers of the neocortex are continually
predicting what they will receive from the perceptive organs. If a
layer's prediction fails, the input is passed up to the next layer and
each layer has more extensive lateral connections than the layer below
it. So consciousness is emergent engagement of the top layer; although
Hawkins doesn't speculate much about this as he is more interested in
intelligence than consciousness.
I've been reading a book of Jonathan Haidt's called "The Righteous
Mind". One of the speculations based on his research into what he
calls moral intuitions is the importance to human evolutionary success
of 'shared intentionality'. This is the ability to intuit, share and
enact common purposes with others.
It is striking that other primates apparently have the ability to copy
or even originate certain behaviours of benefit to themselves
individually but not to intuit and hence share in others' intentions
to the point of benefitting significantly from novel forms of group
cooperation. Plausibly this is indeed related, amongst other
neurocognitive deficits, to a less than human capacity to retain
complex memories and hence make sophisticated extrapolations from a
rich repertoire of experience.
I think it likely that ability in humans co-evolved with the development
of language. Did you ever read Julian Jaynes "The Origin of
Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"?
Brent
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