[Ham] Actually, I found the authors' analysis quite illuminating. Not only is it in simple English (for Case), it effectively refutes the notion of inanimate
(objective) consciousness: [Case] Lets start with this: "The reason for starting with examples rather than definitions is that no objective, scientific explanation seems able to capture the essence of consciousness. As you once reminded me Ham, two things can not occupy the same space at the same time. One person can not have the same experience as another. We can not define the color green. It is a direct sense impression. It can be understood and described in various contexts and individuals can agree on what to call green and can communicate about green things but there is no reason to think that what I respond to as green is identical to the experience of another. Sensation is a private experience it can not be described because it can not be shared. It can be understood through examples and analogies but we do not share each other's direct experiences. And what are these sensations? They are input. As humans we have several input channels, light, sound, two sets of chemical receptors, and a network of nerves for sensing texture and motion. To interpret or make sense of an experience we must integrate sensations from these different channels into a whole. That is one of the functions of our brains. The various sets of nerve pathways in our bodies feed into separate portions of the brain. These all feed into the cortex where they are integrated. This is the many becoming one. This is where differences are united. The smooth texture of an apple is nothing like the color red or the shape round. And yet we can distinguish apples from oranges by sight or touch or taste. [Ham's quote continued] "For example, suppose we try to define consciousness in terms of some characteristic psychological role that all conscious states play - in influencing decisions, perhaps, or in conveying information about our surroundings. "Or we might try to pick out conscious states directly in physical terms, as involving the presence of certain kinds of chemicals in the brain, say. "Any such attempted objective definition seems to leave out the essential ingredient. Such definitions fail to explain why conscious states feel a certain way. [Case] The process of integrating the five senses with our memories involves making new associations and strengthening old ones. Memories grow stronger when stories are told and retold. The process of reflection on memory and making of plans involves slurring time. It is higher order of mental processing because it involves moving back and forth in time. This can be defined in terms on electrochemical activity in the nerves and chemical balances in the synapses. Searles says consciousness is a property of this activity in the same way that solidity is a property of atoms of iron. But no explanation can be entirely satisfying because it can not be entirely shared or communicated to another. It can be approached with metaphor but each experience is not only derived from sense impressions it is colored by emotional responses. These can be based on past experience or on genetics as with food, oxygen, water. Consciousness is difficult to define because all of our brain functions individually and collectively get referred to as consciousness depending on who you talk to. But subjective experience is not one thing. It is a host of things which we pull together and call consciousness. William James put it this way: "The 'I think' which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breath' which actually does accompany them. There are other internal facts besides breathing (intracephalic muscular adjustments, etc., of which I have said a word in my larger Psychology), and these increase the assets of 'consciousness,' so far as the latter is subject to immediate perception; but breath, which was ever the original of 'spirit,' breath moving outwards, between the glottis and the nostrils, is, I am persuaded, the essence out of which philosophers have constructed the entity known to them as consciousness. That entity is fictitious, while thoughts in the concrete are fully real. But thoughts in the concrete are made of the same stuff as things are.' - William James "Does Consciousness Exist?" Not to long ago Case put it this way: "It's the Sense of Senses That defines it; Processes and Refines it. We see, we feel, we think, we know..." Just a final point, rational thinking is verbal and rule governed. It allows us to share the senses and experiences we have integrated subjectively with others. It enables the act of communication. From this comes inter-subjectivity, which is to me at least, the only sense in which the term objectivity makes any sense. [Ham] "Couldn't we in principle build a robot which satisfied any such scientific definition, but which had no real feelings? "Imaging a computer-brained robot whose internal states register "information" about the world and influence the robot's 'decisions'. Such design specifications alone don't seem to guarantee that the robot will have any real feelings. "The lights may be on, but is anyone at home? ..." [Case] I could ask the same of you or you of me. moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
