On 02 Dec 2017, at 00:48, David Nyman wrote:
On 1 December 2017 at 17:45, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
On 28 Nov 2017, at 01:28, David Nyman wrote:
https://www.sciencealert.com/your-consciousness-does-not-switch-off-during-a-dreamless-sleep-say-scientists
Wonderful! Thanks! It confirms Mechanism, both the one of Descartes
and the "theology" of the machine. And the salvia plant!
I have always personally suspect this "experientially", noticing
that the reason we "miss" it is that it very hard to memorize. It
confirms the idea that non-consciousness is relative amnesia, less
neurons makes you more conscious, the brain is something like a
filter, nature is a product of contemplation (Plotinus!),...
Yes, funnily enough I've always strongly suspected there to be
a very tight relation between what we mean by consciousness, or at
least self-consciousness, and certain features of memory. One reason
was suggested by clinical cases of catastrophic damage to short term
memory, where anything beyond the last five minutes or so is
immediately forgotten. In one case featured in a BBC documentary,
the unfortunate sufferer witnessed a video of himself conducting an
orchestra (he was a professional musician and oddly enough could
still conduct music with which he was already familiar). Since he
had no memory of having done it, and ultimately conceding that it
was indeed himself that he was witnessing, he concluded "Then I must
have been unconscious".
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,
Yes. That nuance is the key. Note that some meditation technic leads
to what you say. When we succeed in calming down our thought and mind,
short term memory becomes useless somehow, and "I" disappear. But like
sleep, one car in the street can wake you up from that state.
as you will be unable to imagine formulating an articulate thought
or possibly even assembling a coherent series of sense impressions
or intuitions.
Yes, that is where the "I" plays its role of coherence builder.
On reflection, phenomenal consciousness could plausibly be
characterised in essence as the successive, coherent construction
and 'memorisation' of momentary, dynamical perspectives. It is only
memory that links and weaves such momentary phenomenal perspectives
into coherent spatial-temporal narratives.
It is the building of the "model/reality", but it makes sense only
through some reality, and consciousness is on the side of that
reality, which lead to the utter counter-intuitive idea that to get
individual coherence, we need a brain making us less conscious in some
sense. But I will not insist on this ... today.
Bruno
David
Since 2008 I write in a diary all my salvia experiences, but also
tobacco experience, occasional cannabis experience, occasional
alcohol experiences, and the usual coffee experiences and actually
any pertinent, for the consciousness study, experiences (as they all
influences the outcomes). Since 2008, the first salvia experience,
the mentions of the deep-sleep consciousness experiences has grown
up systematically, and since some years they are mentionned almost
every morning. It is very weird. I made once two "perpendicular
sort-of-dreams", which brought my attention on relations between
quantum logic and octonions, which I found also in a very
interesting paper by John Baes. This plunges me back in my feeling
that little numbers could quickly play a special role, like the
number 24, and the exceptional simple groups, and relation between
groups of permutations of solution of diophantine polynomials. We
understand the metamathematical content of arithmetic through big
numbers
(indeed Gödel represented "2+2=4", that is
"ffa+ffa=ffffa" , (with f, a, +, = equal to even numbers: f is 3, a
is 5, + is 7, = is 9)
by
(2^f)(3^f)(5^a)(7^+)(11^f)(13^f)(17^a)(19^=)(23^f)(29^f)(31^f)(37^f)
(39^a)
which is an astromical numbers. Today we use efficient coding, of
course, which adds intensional and modal relations. But it could be
that little numbers have already a rich and deep metamathematical
content, arithmetic would understand itself more quickly than our
apparent current detour through a quantum vacuum fluctuation going
wrong make us to think...
Otto Rossler once summed up Descartes Mechanism with "consciousness
is a prison". Mechanism seems a bit pernicious, as it predicts
somehow that we might get the solution of the mind-body problem when
we die, or "sleep" deep enough (cf Shakespeare), unfortunately we
don't memorize, and our billions years of prejudices can strikes
back in a second.
Very interesting (and relevant) studies!
Bruno
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