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From: stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens)
Subject: Re: Thought Question
Message-ID: <1995Jan13.184941.6505@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>
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Date: Fri, 13 Jan 95 18:49:41 GMT
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In <vlsi_libD2Bpxq.C9r@netcom.com> vlsi_lib@netcom.com (Gerard Malecki) writes:
>In article <1995Jan12.184559.2530@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>, stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens) writes:

>|> While it is an interesting thought experiment, and brings up the point that
>|> there is no evolutionary benefit to consciousness (natural selection acts
>|> on behaviors not thoughts), it assumes that organisms and responsiveness
>|> CAN arise without subjective perception. People say,"Well, I can imagine
>|> an organism with no subjectivity but still behaving as I do..." but is
>|> it possible?

>What are living beings made of? Atoms. What do atoms want to do? 

Absolutely nothing.  They don't "want" anything.

>Get into
>stable configurations, presumably. If they can find bliss in forming 
>simple, stable structures like methane, why should they bother evolving
>into more and more complex structures (a.k.a. life)? 

Check out Stuart Kauffman on this.  Or Manfred Eigen's hypercycle concept.
Both have addressed how there may be pressure towards complexity in
biophysical systems.

>... So are such
>things as suffering of the prey just imagined?

Only if you are a radical reductionist, which is a viewpoint most people gave
up in the 50's with the deal of logical positivism.

>......Consciousness-merging is an established fact
>in neurology, mainly through experiments involving the corpus callosum.

I hope you're not going to try to cite anything talking about atomic 
consciousness in elementary particles.  If you think "consciousness-merging"
is an "established fact" then you have read too little neurology or
cognitive philosophy.  There are in fact many out there who do not think
we have a unified consciousness at all, but that our consciousness consists
of many UNmerged modules (Brooks, Varela, et al...).

Greg Stevens
stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu

>Shankar Ramakrishnan
>shankar@vlibs.com
