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From: kovsky@netcom.com (Bob Kovsky)
Subject: Re: Is CONSCIOUSNESS continuous? discrete? quantized?
Message-ID: <kovskyD4F01u.7qy@netcom.com>
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Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 18:44:18 GMT
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In the previous article Greg Stevens responded to a message from me:

<deletia>

I wrote:

>>...Consciousness is
>>seriously consequential:  compare your ability to do something while
>>consciously attending to it with your ability to do the same thing
>>unconsciously. 

Mr. Steven responded:

>But a machine that is not conscious could potentially perform that task
>also.  It is possible that the neurological firings could be completely
>mechanistically accounting for your behavior, while your SUBJECTIVE
>experience of it is epiphenomenal. 

	There are no such machines.  Some people, such as some computer
scientists, fantasize about them; but, their attempts to construct such
machines always suffer "brittle failures."  You <start> with an assumption
of mechanism and draw a conclusion that my "SUBJECTIVE experience" is
epiphenomenal. 

	You are asserting a myth of "objectivity."  "ALL experience" is 
subjective, ab initio.  Formalisms and methodologies are used to construct 
"objectivity."  But what are the consequences of those formalisms and 
methodologies?  Do they not, perhaps, gut the life our of experience?

	If instead of arguing from dogmas and fantasizing about power, you
quieted your mind and <looked at your life>, you might come to appreciate
the consequential importance of consciousness in it. 

-- 

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    Bob Kovsky          |  A Natural Science of Freedom 
    kovsky@netcom.com   |  Materials available by anonymous ftp
                        |  At ftp.netcom.com/pub/fr/freedom
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