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From: malcolm@geog.leeds.ac.uk (Malcolm McMahon)
Subject: Re: Beyond "Shadows of the Mind"
Message-ID: <1994Dec20.111505.9919@leeds.ac.uk>
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Date: Tue, 20 Dec 1994 11:15:04 +0000 (GMT)
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    <3d552v$epq@crl3.crl.com>
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In article <3d552v$epq@crl3.crl.com>, Walter Raisanen <azi@crl.com> wrote:
>Attempts to define human self-awareness in terms that might be 
>extrapolated to machines are similarly afflicted.
>Does anyone have a new idea to offer in all this muddle?

Sort of. Forget it. Metalogic (which is basically what you are talking about)
is not really more of a problem in computational terms that ordinary inference
engines. I don't see that is has much to do with consciousness. I am inclined
to think that self-consciousness is the lowest form of consciousness anyway.
I am not at my most conscious in introspection but in involvement with the
external world.

Not only do I see no evidence that thought (whether about thought or about
anything else) is responsible for consciousness. We are hardly even conscious
of thought. Only the outcomes of the real thought process is presented to
us, not the process itself.

I think this is because thought is hightly parallel while consciousness is
serial. I suspect that the thought process can only present its results to
consciousness at all through the speech centres which effectively serialise
them.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                        Malcolm McMahon -
views expressed do not necessarilly represent the unanimous view of all parts
                            of my mind.
I love the smell of rats -  |   See the happy moron! / He doesn't give a damn
(Feynman)                   |   I wish I were a moron /  My God! Perhaps I am  


