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From: stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens)
Subject: Re: Is CONSCIOUSNESS continuous? discrete? quantized?
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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> <kovskyD4D4uy.1nn@netcom.com> <3ie1kb$6h7@remus.rutgers.edu>
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 95 04:52:36 GMT
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In <3ie1kb$6h7@remus.rutgers.edu> wclark@remus.rutgers.edu (Bill Clark) writes:
>kovsky@netcom.com (Bob Kovsky) writes:

>>	A model of causal determinism necessarily reduces consciousness 
>>to an epiphenomenon.  This is because such a model is unable to deal with 

>This depends entirely on what kind of determinism you mean.  A system may be
>completely deterministic, but possess subsystems that fail to be so (when
>viewed from *within* the subsytem).  A perfect example is fluid dynamics,
>which did not initially lend itself to *any* deterministic theory, and had to
>be initially handled stochatically.  When the proper "general" theories were
>found, the systems could be described deterministically (in theory).  In
>essense, this means that free will can exist so long as consciousness is not
>aware of the fundamental deterministic laws governing its behavior (thus
>making consciousness more than just an "epiphenomenon" in its own eyes).

I'm sorry, I did not follow how stochastics is related to free will.
Could you please elucidate.  Saying that a subsystem of our brain-mind
system is stochastic and that on the level of the general theory it is
still deterministic doesn't seem to speak to the free will issue for
me.

If consciousness is epiphenomenal but not perceived as such, does that make
it less epiphenomenal?  If the direct causal connections between deterministic
brain mechanism and behavior are effectively screened off from the observer,
does that mean they are not there?

Greg Stevens

stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu

