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Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!galileo.cc.rochester.edu!prodigal.psych.rochester.edu!stevens
From: stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens)
Subject: Re: Is CONSCIOUSNESS continuous? discrete? quantized?
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References: <departedD3vKy5.M3B@netcom.com> <3hs7eu$scs@giant.seas.smu.edu> <departedD437At.FxE@netcom.com> <D4CBxB.I5z@ucc.su.oz.au> <kovskyD4D4uy.1nn@netcom.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 95 22:21:13 GMT
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In <kovskyD4D4uy.1nn@netcom.com> kovsky@netcom.com (Bob Kovsky) writes:
>In the previous article, Vic Cinc wrote (among other matters): 

>>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? 

>	An "epiphenomenon" has no consequential effect on anything, an
>information sink, so to speak.  Consciousness, on the other hand, is
>seriously consequential:  compare your ability to do something while
>consciously attending to it with your ability to do the same thing
>unconsciously. 

But a machine that is not conscious could potentially perform that task
also.  It is possible that the neurological firings could be completely
mechanistically accounting for your behavior, while your SUBJECTIVE
experience of it is epiphenomenal. 

>	A model of causal determinism necessarily reduces consciousness 
>to an epiphenomenon.  

Like I said above, but you can not use "conscious attension" as evidence
against causal determinism.

>This is because such a model is unable to deal with 
>the "mind-body problem" as presenting an <interactive> system in which 
>non-material experience has a consequential effect on material bodies.  
>The reality is, however, that non-material experience does have a 
>consequential effect on material bodies.  

Why do you think this?

>The construction of conscious experience would appear to require a 
>substantial apparatus.  Why waste all that material and energy on an 
>"epiphenomenon?"

Who said someone put energy and material into constructing it?  Unless
you are a creationist, it HAPPENED.

Besides, what about the concept of a "necessary epiphenomenon"?  Something
which, as a result of certain parameter specifications of some process,
MUST result as an epiphenomenon -- but nonetheless has no consequences.

Some view subjectivity and consciousness this way.

Greg
stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu

