Jochen, 

Nice.  I discovered when I moved to a small town in New England 40 years
ago, I found  that there were lots of "theys" but no "we's".  So, people
would get together and discuss the bad behavior of "they" who lived "up
town", but when you got up town, you never could find any "we" that
corresponded to that "they".  

So, what if your consciousness is just like that.  I look across the table
and I see one body, and I assume that there is "a mind" to correspond to
that unitary body.  But lo, it isnt true.  Over there, on that side of the
table, there is no" I" that corresponds to that "he", just a bunch of
different systems struggling to be in control of the body and to look
responsible to the people accross the table.  Given that a body can get
chucked in the loony bin for not being unitary, it is not surprizing that
the conflicting systems that control it would be under some constraint to
try to appear organized to the outside world.   

Isnt this very close to Dennett's view in CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED?  

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, 
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/




> [Original Message]
> From: Jochen Fromm <[email protected]>
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]>
> Date: 6/19/2009 4:35:43 AM
> Subject: [FRIAM] The FRIAM mind (was: 'Do robots dream of
electricillusions? or Bladerunner, theRealist's Cut')
>
> You are talking about the list as if it is a single
> entity (let us see how 'the list' responds), although
> it is composed of several independent individuals:
> Russ, Stephen, Glen, Douglas, to name a few.
> Can we think of the mind as a similar kind of
> list or group, which is composed of several agents?
> Is the society of mind metaphor from Minsky
> helpful to explain behavior?
>
> If the FRIAM list discusses itself, would
> this be a form of self-consciousness for
> the FRIAM mind?
>
> -J.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: Nicholas Thompson
> To: [email protected]
> Cc: Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 11:32 PM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Do robots dream of electric illusions? or 
> Bladerunner,theRealist's Cut
>
> [...]
> It will be interesting to see how the list responds.
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
> Clark University ([email protected])
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
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