From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!secapl!Cookie!frank Fri Oct 30 15:17:52 EST 1992
Article 7415 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams)
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Message-ID: <1992Oct27.223726.82685@Cookie.secapl.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1992 22:37:26 GMT
References: <1992Oct13.085347.13831@klaava.Helsinki.FI> <g87wsB1w165w@CODEWKS.nacjack.gen.nz> <1992Oct19.133435.18702@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
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In article <1992Oct19.133435.18702@klaava.Helsinki.FI> amnell@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Marko Amnell) writes:
>I don't know how many participants in the discussion would agree with
>me, but any workable definition of consciousness would have to go beyond
>mere cognition -- the capacity for thought, something like purposeful
>use of information to achieve results (to just give a sketch) -- and
>include sensory awareness of one's environment, self-awareness of
>oneself as a thinking being, a history of interaction with similar
>beings (something repeatedly stressed by Davidson in his criticism of
>the Turing Test) and hence membership in a community of thinkers.
>All this is not meant to be a real definition, but just something to
>start the ball rolling, if anyone would care to push it further.

I'll push back, thank you :-)

On the contrary, I feel very strongly that consciousness does not depend on
history.  This is confusing the cause of an event with the event itself.
I am conscious; however I had come to be what I am, I would still be
conscious.  It is true that the only way we know of for humans to become
conscious is by a history of sensory awareness and interaction with similar
entities, but there is no reason to think that this actually the *only* way
to attain the state.

I will agree that awareness of one's environment is necessary, but unless
"sensory" is defined so widely as to become meaningless, I don't see why
that constraint is necessary.  Humans are so constucted that "book learning"
doesn't have the same immediacy to our minds as "actual experience"; but
that seems to me to be an evolutionary accident.  Direct experience connects
to our brains in a rich variety of ways; linguistic input is filtered almost
exclusively through our higher reasoning centers.  It happened that way for
good evolutionary reasons, but there is no apparent reason that it has to be
so for any conscious entity.

"Self-awareness of oneself as a thinking being" is, the way I would use the
words, a more developed state than just consciousness; I think a being can
be conscious without being self-aware, but not vice versa.  The idea you
seem to be getting at here is what I would call "sentience".  (Note that
everything I said in the last two paragraphs applies just as well to
sentience as it does to consciousness.)


