----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen A. Lawrence" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2007 5:19 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Re: OT: The Mindless crap shoot of evolution
>> Sensible contribution Stephen, but you must admit it's not reassuring to >> think of oneself as the >> result of a number of dice throws. If you go down that slope, the next thing >> you lose is your own >> free will isn't it? > Memory, yeah, that's organic, and emotion seems to be rooted in organic > processes as well, but > there's a ghost in the machine which isn't accounted for by today's science; > I know it whenever I > look out of my eyes. Either that, or the Stephen-machine is self-deceiving ;-) > Consider the following little "quiz", given here with my suggested answers > (with which you may > disagree, of course): > > Are you conscious? Presumably. > Is your dog conscious? I'd guess so. > Is a goldfish conscious? Uh... I think so. > Is an ant conscious? Hmmm. > Is a paramecium conscious? > Is a dandelion conscious? Almost assuredly not. > Is a rock conscious? No, of course not. The strong correlation between consciousness and the neurone count would be purely coincidental? > It's worth mentioning in passing that anthropologists love to confuse the > term "conscious" with > the term "self-aware" and then babble about how only great apes seem to > recognize themselves in a > mirror so nothing lower than the apes is "self-aware", and then act like > they've proven something > about consciousness. IMHO experiments with mirrors and lipstick show nothing > except how quick on > the uptake animals are as regards mirrors and lipstick. > > So, to sum up, yes, there's a slippery slope there, but at the bottom of the > slope lies the > quagmire of Total Confusion rather than Nihilism -- > or at least, it does if you slide down the slope with your mind open to the > assertion that today's > science doesn't know everything. But could our mind possibly be open to the idea that like paramecia we are machines, only with more computing power? We couldn't possibly cope with this thought could we? We would have to resort to a ghost in the machine, or even a deus in the machina... Michel
