From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wupost!uunet!mcsun!news.funet.fi!hydra!klaava!amnell Sat Oct 24 20:44:36 EDT 1992
Article 7349 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: amnell@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Marko Amnell)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Message-ID: <1992Oct21.101000.1131@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 21 Oct 92 10:10:00 GMT
References: <g87wsB1w165w@CODEWKS.nacjack.gen.nz> <1992Oct19.133435.18702@klaava.Helsinki.FI> <BwGKx3.5oJ@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 44

In article <BwGKx3.5oJ@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> lcarr@silver.ucs.indiana.edu
(lincoln carr) writes:

>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.
>
>Why would consciousness need to be this broad?  For example, if all of
>my external senses were destroyed and all that I could do is
>apperceive, I would still be conscious.  Also, if I were abandoned on
>a desert island with no interaction with other sentient life from
>birth and survived somehow, I would still be conscious.  So, the only
>part of your definition with with I agree and the only part that I
>think is necessary to define consciousness is self-awareness of
>oneself as a thinking being.

Please note the distinction between the genealogy of conscioussness and
factors necessary for its upkeep.  When you bring up the Robinson Crusoe
counter-example to my definition, you should keep it mind that sensory
stimuli and a more or less healthy childhood of interaction with fellow
human beings went into making you what you are today.  Yes, you can take
them away afterwards but this does not change the fact that they were
instrumental in forming you as a conscious being.  I think that a child
deprived of all sensory stimuli (who `grew up in a barrel' as they say
in Finland) would fail to achieve a full, healthy conscious state on par
with other people.  An explanation of consciousness must take these
historical elements into consideration.  It might even be necessary to go
further, and claim that a conscious being must have a certain kind of
evolutionary background, but this appears open.

-- 
Marko Amnell
amnell@klaava.helsinki.fi
Graduate Student in Philosophy


