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Article 7442 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: burt@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca (Burt Voorhees)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: We've Been Tricked- consciousness
Message-ID: <burt.720392392@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca>
Date: 29 Oct 92 20:59:52 GMT
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>In article <burt.720224034@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca> burt@aupair.cs.athabascau.
ca (Burt Voorhees) writes:

>>Problem is, there is still not an adaquate definition of consciousness
>>so we all go around in circles talking about what _we_ think it is
>>and wondering why others don't agree.

>I agree that we go around in circles because of differing definitions.
>However, the same could most probably be said of a lot of scientific
>and philosophical terms when they first started seeing use.  For
>example, didn't physicists at some point have to decide upon a common
>vocabulary in order to communicate with one another?  Were the
>definitions of their terms always obvious?  I see no difference in
>trying to argue out a definition for the word "consciousness" and
>arguing out a definition for the word "atom."

Yes, we do need to come up with a definition.
Right now there are lots of terms around:
consciousness, awareness, sentience, thinking,
intelligence, self-consciousness, etc.  We
need to have accurate definitions for all of these.
But in the case of consciousness my own opinion
is that this question of definition will be extra
tricky.  In particular, I don't think that it will
be posssible to define consciousness in terms of
what it _is_, but only negatively, in terms of
what it _is not_.  My own preferred definition is that
consciousness is that which is beyond all possible distinctions.
Sort of a modern version of Parmenides.  Since our normal
way of making definitions involves making distinctions,
however, there will be problems.  I admit that this is
a rather radical view, but it does save lots of hand
waving later on.  The question then becomes one of
coming up with a theory of how mental structures
appear in the brain and nervous system, and how they
are organized in order to give rise to a structure of
self with which consciousness (mistakenly) identifies
to become self-conscious.
bv


