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From: departed@netcom.com (just passing through)
Subject: Re: Thought Question
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Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 04:28:39 GMT
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In article <3h6ifr$3o3@gap.cco.caltech.edu>,
David Soergel  <ds@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
>> Awareness is information being remapped onto a different space.  You
>> can see people receiving information and emitting an interestingly
>> altered signal, hence they are aware.
>> 
>> You can also see them receiving their own signals, and emitting a
>> remapped signal, hence they are self aware.
>> 
>> From the point of view of awareness happening, the knowledge of what
>> the structure is of the information space wherein the information is
>> remapped, is somewhat beside the point.  The mere fact of this alteration
>> occurring, is what awareness is.
>

>Granted, but you're not claiming that awareness thus defined is the
>same thing as consciousness, are you?  Do you feel pain or only react
>to it?

That's what I'm claiming, yes.  The pain doesn't feel pain, anyhow --
some other part does that.

I think that awareness of awareness happening in some other part of your mind
is what's commonly called consciousness.  The part's that actually doing
the awareness is not itself aware of doing that -- it's just doing it.
(BTW I would like to emphasize that what I'm calling 'awareness' is more
like a process than a thing, and should be treated as such.)

>I disagree especially with your statement that the "structure of the
>information space"--that is, of the mind--is irrelevant.  You're right
>that it is irrelevant to proving awareness in the stimulus-response
>sense, but it is crucial to understanding consciousness; said structure
>is what consciousness _is_!

It is crucial to understanding consciousness; it's just for this particular
question that it's somewhat beside the point.  I wouldn't say that
consciousness is what that transformational structure is; I would say
that consciousness (or awareness, to use a perhaps less ambiguous term)
is the process of passing information into and out of that informational
space (transforming the information and most likely the i-space as well.)

That informational space might just be a subset of your mind.  Or it
might be even outside your mind somewhat, like a Day-Timer or another
person.

But if information is presented (I poke you) and remapped to an
interestingly different output ("Ouch! Why'd you do that?") then you'd
have to say that a high degree of awareness is represented.  Or if you
reacted like a sea slug and just withdrew slightly (every time) I would
have to consider that a much lower degree of awareness.

I don't believe that there is any awareness-process that is conscious of
itself as it is happening. You may transform information from a
slightly past information-space into the present one, giving rise to
awareness concerning yourself, but that is a process which is 
conscious of existence as a stream of memory-packets, not of itself.

Anyhow, my point is (as relates to the consciousness discussion) just
that the fact of successfully crossing borders into another space and
coming back in a different form is what awareness is all about.  The
space itself is mute -- just a 'thing', not a process, which is what
we're interested in.

I do agree that:
Any 'internal' information space is interesting insofar as it has
internal borders which may be crossed -- i.e. it is composed of sub-
awarenesses.  I do believe this is ordinarily the case, that in
awareness (consisting of receiving, remapping, and transmission), 
the remapping is actually simpler awarenesses (orthogonal to their
parent, if you will) doing receiving, remapping, and transmission.

>Sorry for beating a dead horse--I don't expect to be able to conclusively
>debunk behaviorism here.  I just don't buy it, that's all.  Also I'm 
>sorry if I misinterpreted your post: perhaps you didn't intend the word
>"awareness" to imply consciousness as well.  (It's unfortunate that 
>"self-awareness" and "consciousness" are so often used as synonyms when
>they're not!).

Behaviorism is wrongheaded inasmuch as it allows no internal complexity
to the subject.  But it is right inasmuch as your awareness is a
phenomenon, and there is no 'subject' as a thing.

You can of course have a mental space in which there is an 'I'-thing
to which you can relate events stimuli etc. -- or you might not.  That's
an arbitrary activity which your awareness may engage in.

In reality, 'your' awareness is not even embedded solely in your mind.
First, things must come to it and go from it for it to be called awareness,
and so there must be a world, and secondly many items besides what's
between your ears help you represent information in and through different
spaces.  Your desk, something you wrote, somebody you talked to.  I think
of your awareness as being sort of a fuzzy cloud of processes being
roughly centered around your mind/body.

>-David Soergel
>
>-David

-- Richard Wesson (departed@netcom.com)

p.s. I think a good Turing-test question would be, 'tell me a story 
about some occasion that changed your life" -- a question that demands
recognition of awareness as a process.

