On 2 Dec 2017 01:57, "Brent Meeker" <[email protected]> wrote:
On 12/1/2017 5:21 PM, David Nyman wrote: On 2 December 2017 at 00:58, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On 12/1/2017 4:46 PM, David Nyman wrote: > > On 2 December 2017 at 00:06, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> 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"? You betcha! A paradigm shifter if ever I read one though it's many years since. It always struck me as perfectly plausible in general direction even if no particular detail of Jaynes's speculations were precisely accurate. David 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 https://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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
