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Article 2774 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: geb@dsl.pitt.edu (gordon e. banks)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Waking up is hard to do, but somebody's got to do it
Message-ID: <13010@pitt.UUCP>
Date: 16 Jan 92 15:21:34 GMT
References: <61968@netnews.upenn.edu> <370@tdatirv.UUCP> <62373@netnews.upenn.edu>
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Organization: Decision Systems Laboratory, Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
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In article <62373@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>
>Good grief.  Pet dogs are pampered--they learn to be finicky.  [On a
>related note, one study that impressed me is that large parts of our
>pain processing is learned.  Dogs raised in utter isolation from even
>small injuries have a much higher pain threshhold than your normal dog.]
>
Very true in humans, although I wouldn't use the word "learned" since
to the patient that would have connotations that it wasn't physiologic.
Patients who have a lot of pain will get less and less tolerant of it.
Sort of counter intuitive.  The explanation is probably neurochemical.
Even on a scale of seconds if you jab someone with a pin over and over
too quickly, there is a temporal summation effect.  This may not be
related to the longer-term chronic pain effects.

>The above is at best an ad hoc explanation.  You can do this for any
>correlation I mention.  My friend Occam likes the unified explanation:
>sleep is needed for consciousness/intelligence.
>
Doesn't Hobson think it is memory that is integrated in during sleep?
Also, REM sleep, when this is done seemingly is only a small fraction
of total sleep.  There is a lot going on that we don't understand yet.


Incidentally, you mentioned general anesthesia as a problem for the
neuronal theory of consciousness.  Can you be more specific?  I talked
to someone who is an expert in the use of inert gases as anesthetics
and he didn't seem to see the problem.  He does experiments with hippocampal
slices and can effect their synaptic conduction quite well with inert
gases.

>
>So give the dogfish an ultralow primitive consciousness.  So low that
>calling it conscious--unqualified--is ridiculous.
>
Again, what exactly do you mean by conscious?  Alertness to the environment,
which a dogfish certainly is, or some sort of introspection, which a
shrew is unlikely to have.
-- 
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Gordon Banks  N3JXP      | "I have given you an argument; I am not obliged
geb@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu   |  to supply you with an understanding." -S.Johnson
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