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Article 7351 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: lcarr@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (lincoln carr)
Subject: Re: We've Been Tricked- consciousness
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Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1992 15:39:56 GMT
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In article <nijmanm.719672415@hpas7> nijmanm@prl.philips.nl (M.J. Nijman) writes:
>
>Why is self-awareness a condition for consiousness? I can very well imagine
>someone (something ?!) being aware of what is going on somewhere without
>being aware of himself (itself). Think of it this way: there exist 2
>non-interacting worlds, W1 and W2. It can be true that an entity (call it P)
>in W1 is ONLY aware of what goes on in (a part of) W2, without being able to
>effect anything in W2 (since P is in W1), and thus not being able to perceive
>itself or anything effected by it. Thus P would be consious without being
>self-aware.
>

Hmmm . . . it would seem that a being that perceived anything would be
aware of the fact of its own perception.  Also, if the worlds were
noninteracting, how could a being exist in one and perceive in the
other?  Isn't perception itself an interaction?  Perhaps I didn't put
enough qualifications on my definition of self-awareness to make it
weak enough.  All I am saying is that a conscious being is aware of
its perception, not that it is itself a single being, which is an
impossible to be sure of, nor that it is doing anything other than
perceiving.  Even if an evil spirit were filling one's mind with
spurious images and false conclusions, one would still be aware that
SOMETHING was being filled with spurious images and false conclusions.



-- 
Lincoln R. Carr, Computer Scientist-Philosopher    lcarr@silver.ucs.indiana.edu
"Treat all rational autonomous moral agents, whether in the form of yourself
or another, never as means solely, but always as ends in themselves."
                  Immanuel Kant, from "Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals"


