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Article 7368 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: nijmanm@prl.philips.nl (M.J. Nijman)
Subject: Re: We've Been Tricked- consciousness
Message-ID: <nijmanm.719759308@hpas7>
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References: <iordonez.719617253@academ01> <BwGKG0.M6@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> <nijmanm.719672415@hpas7> <1992Oct21.163922.27440@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1992 13:08:28 GMT
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amnell@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Marko Amnell) writes:

>In article <nijmanm.719672415@hpas7> nijmanm@prl.philips.nl 
>(M.J. Nijman) writes:

>>lcarr@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (lincoln carr) writes:
>>
>>>How would everyone out on the net define consiousness?  I would start
>>>by saying that consciousness is self-awareness, or apperception of
>>>oneself.  Perhaps a good question in a Turing test would be "How do
>>>you know that you exist?"
>>
>>Why is self-awareness a condition for consiousness? I can very well imagine
>>someone (something ?!) being aware of what is going on somewhere without
>>being aware of himself (itself). Think of it this way: there exist 2
>>non-interacting worlds, W1 and W2. It can be true that an entity (call it P)
>>in W1 is ONLY aware of what goes on in (a part of) W2, without being able to
>>effect anything in W2 (since P is in W1), and thus not being able to perceive
>>itself or anything effected by it. Thus P would be consious without being
>>self-aware.

>You have simply redefined the word `consciousness' to mean the strange
>predicament of the denizens of W1.  The situation you've described is
>certainly not in agreement with what I call _normal_ consciousness. 

That's probably because what you call _normal_ consciousness is
awareness of for example an apple plus awareness of that awareness.
What would you call it if that last part was not there?

>But, there is no sharp demarcation intended in a real definition of
>consciousness.  There is no real purpose to just trying to get all the
>`conscious things' on one side of the divide and all the 'non-conscious
>things' on the other side.

Agreed.

>One could always come up with far-fetched
>counter-examples by using one's imagination; as you've demonstrated.

I don't know whether it's far feched (although the descibed entity is
not a human).

>The real reason for wishing to `define' or describe consciousness would
>be to try to explain what it is, so that we can better understand
>ourselves, and, since we're in comp.ai.philosophy, to understand what a
>machine would have to be like before we should ascribe consciousness to
>it.

Again, I agree.

Marcel Nijman

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