Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!news.mathworks.com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!pipex!warwick!nott-cs!lut.ac.uk!usenet
From: A.Bridgen@lut.ac.uk (Adam `moose` Bridgen)
Subject: Re: Is CONSCIOUSNESS continuous? discrete?
Sender: usenet@lut.ac.uk (Usenet-News)
Message-ID: <D4Etu5.5KC@lut.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 16:30:05 GMT
Reply-To: A.Bridgen@lut.ac.uk
References: <departedD437At.FxE@netcom.com>
Nntp-Posting-Host: pugwash.lut.ac.uk
Organization: LUTCHI Research Centre, Loughborough University of Technology, UK
Keywords: continuous, discrete, quantized
Lines: 11

A few ideas from   Richard Wesson departed@netcom.com  (article not included, just because right....)
 
Why do you want to define consciousness? Once you have done so there is no continuous range of conciousness, only artefacts that fit your definition or not. If you percieve consciousness as being an attribute of your artefact per se, then you should be able to define it. However if, say, you label something as conscious because in your judgement it exhibits enough of a set of behaviors, then you're in trouble.

When you use a quality without context it is meaningless. However, I have a context for the term consciousness, namely ME. This causes problems because it is personal; However, I can still communicate and describe consciousness by attempting to map my context onto yours. I cannot see that you would get very far explaining consciousness to something that isn't (say, a tree).

Finally, I would like to see examples for entities X and Y, one of which is conscious, one not, but X and Y only differ infinitesimally. Until you cite examples you cannot ask to be given a reason. At present, I can't think of any.

 -- Adam Bridgen. 


