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From: vicc@ucc.su.oz.au (Vic Cinc)
Subject: Re: Is CONSCIOUSNESS continuous? discrete? quantized?
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Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 08:07:59 GMT
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just passing through (departed@netcom.com) wrote:

: My definition would be:  the ongoing process of information exchange
: across spaces that map the information differently, which spaces are
: affected by the information transferred.  The more ordinary definition
: of consciousness in human life would be a specialized case of that:
: absorbing information and remapping it into your inner world(s), and
: being affected thereby.

"information": does information have a meaning outside the context of mind?
I would say no.

your definition would encompass any simple communication.  
if 2 people talk is there a consciousness that comes to being betwen them?
seems unlikely.

the simple action of maping is fairly high level process.
would a rock map anything?
unlikely, but does that preclude it from being conscious? not really.

the ability to map to me implies a self-organising system.
you could go further and ask is any self-organising system conscious.
is a plant conscious? certainly not like we are.

to me consciousness is awareness, as divorced from the activity of the mind
which include memory, filtering, sorting, reasoning, discriminating.

thoughts are the processing of mind, consciousness or awareness
is something else yet fundamental. Penrose argues for a non-computational
aspect of mind. to me this would be consciousness.

if consciousness is an epiphenomena of the brains neural net. then what
is so special about this bit of software that make it conscious
and the software under silicon apparently not? some people say sheer
complexity, to me this seems unsatisfactory.


Vic


+-------------------------------------------------------------+
 Vic Cinc, ASDC pty ltd
 internet: vicc@extro.ucc.su.oz.au
    smail: GPO Box 1660 Sydney NSW 2001 AUSTRALIA

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