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Article 2801 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Anesthesia
Message-ID: <62555@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 16 Jan 92 19:50:15 GMT
References: <61968@netnews.upenn.edu> <370@tdatirv.UUCP> <62373@netnews.upenn.edu> <13010@pitt.UUCP>
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Reply-To: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
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In-reply-to: geb@dsl.pitt.edu (gordon e. banks)

In article <13010@pitt.UUCP>, geb@dsl (gordon e. banks) writes:
>Incidentally, you mentioned general anesthesia as a problem for the
>neuronal theory of consciousness.  Can you be more specific?

The curious way in which consciousness alone seems to be negated.  Sensory
input and learning and emotional reaction can still go on under anesthesia.
A purely neural network theory of all mental features will have to show
some extra ingenuity to explain this.

>[My expert colleague] does experiments with hippocampal slices and can
>effect their synaptic conduction quite well with inert gases.

In Marshall's pumped phonon condensate speculation, the point is that the
neurons and synapses are just part of the story.  The firing rates are
affected by anesthesia, but not turned off, so numerous mental processes
still proceed, albeit impaired.  But consciousness itself is associated
with the PPC parasitic on the neurons, and the PPC has a fairly sharp
phase transition into non-existence if the energy pump is blocked past
a certain amount.

Moreover, this could eventually be an experimental test of mental PPCs.

>>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?

Nothing "exact" in particular.  It's a flexible concept that none of us
understand yet.  How else could I say "so give the dogfish ..."?
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu)


