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From: departed@netcom.com (just passing through)
Subject: Re: Is CONSCIOUSNESS continuous? discrete? quantized?
Message-ID: <departedD4DC0D.KAE@netcom.com>
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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>
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 21:07:25 GMT
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In article <D4CBxB.I5z@ucc.su.oz.au>, Vic Cinc <vicc@ucc.su.oz.au> wrote:
>just passing through (departed@netcom.com) wrote:
>
>: My definition would be:  the ongoing process of information exchange
>: across spaces that map the information differently, which spaces are
>: affected by the information transferred.  The more ordinary definition
>: of consciousness in human life would be a specialized case of that:
>: absorbing information and remapping it into your inner world(s), and
>: being affected thereby.
>
>"information": does information have a meaning outside the context of mind?
>I would say no.

There are formal definitions of information that don't talk about minds.
 
>your definition would encompass any simple communication.  
>if 2 people talk is there a consciousness that comes to being betwen them?
>seems unlikely.

I would say there is, insofar as their relationship defines an interesting
space wherein information changes its shape.  You may notice that you act
(and maybe feel) like a different person around different people;  I don't
think it's a great leap to say that there is a group consciousness which
is to some extent using your personal consciousness as a basis.  Take
a look at any intimate relationship, or conversely mob psychology.  The
group may come up with things that the individual never would ...

>the simple action of maping is fairly high level process.
>would a rock map anything?
>unlikely, but does that preclude it from being conscious? not really.

A rock isn't doing much mapping; you might say it remaps the effects of
wind and weather, but that's stretching it.
A plant may be doing a little remapping, changing information about sun
and water into chemical gradients.
So I would like to say that a plant is indeed very, very slightly conscious.

>the ability to map to me implies a self-organising system.
>you could go further and ask is any self-organising system conscious.
>is a plant conscious? certainly not like we are.
>
>to me consciousness is awareness, as divorced from the activity of the mind
>which include memory, filtering, sorting, reasoning, discriminating.

Well fine, you're trying to say that awareness is independent of processes
that act on information.  I might even agree to some extent, to say that
awareness is what makes information available to be acted on in the first
place.  This fits with my definition.

>thoughts are the processing of mind, consciousness or awareness
>is something else yet fundamental. Penrose argues for a non-computational
>aspect of mind. to me this would be consciousness.

Consciousnesss is the ongoing wave of transformation of information, by
my lights.  I think that's part of what makes it so mysterious -- it's
not a 'thing' which lives anywhere, although we do think (mistakenly) of
our selves as things.
I think that to insist that consciousness is somehow by nature
uncomputable is just a last-ditch effort to keep the place of
consciousness as singular and 'special'.  I would like to see
consciousness as part of _some_ whole world.  Usually efforts
to keep humanity singular and special at the center of the universe
have failed, and this one should too.

>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? some people say sheer
>complexity, to me this seems unsatisfactory.

What makes it special is subjectivity.  Software doesn't seem to have
a well-formed nicely structured world of its own; we see it as not having
an interior space of any sort but simply acting as a conduit for _our_
information.  At this time, that viewpoint is justified, but I believe
subjectivity in software is possible.

>Vic
> Vic Cinc, ASDC pty ltd
> internet: vicc@extro.ucc.su.oz.au
>    smail: GPO Box 1660 Sydney NSW 2001 AUSTRALIA

-- Richard Wesson (departed@netcom.com)

