[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hopefully, trying to bring this personal manifesto to a reasonably short conclusion, might I suggest that the problem may lie more in our current perceptions of what makes up the core of our INDIVIDUALITY - our sense of SELF. First of all, I would wager that the awareness of our SELF can hardly be considered an objective experience capable of being measured easily in objective terms.
Right -- and in fact it's the single biggest piece of evidence that there's something we don't quite understand yet in the world. The fact that I am conscious is, really, the "elephant in the living room".
Are you conscious? Is a cat conscious? Is a cicada conscious? Is my computer conscious? How might you prove any of your answers to those questions to me? You can't provide me with a solid answer to any of those questions, of course, because we haven't got a shred of a clue what "consciousness" is, and in fact the only evidence for the phenomenon's existence each of us has applies to just one person, and no other.
Turing test -- pfui. Turing's attempt at describing consciousness is like someone in 1300 trying to describe the properties of the electrical fluid.
Many years ago, I had an argument with a very intelligent guy who seemed to be of the opinion that "consicousness" doesn't exist, period, because it's just too silly a notion. Someday maybe I'll post some of his arguments here, if I can recall any of them.
