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From: un286@freenet.Victoria.BC.CA (Daniel Saunders)
Subject: Re: Thought Question
Message-ID: <1995Jan29.222741.20231@freenet.victoria.bc.ca>
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Reply-To: un286@freenet.Victoria.BC.CA (Daniel Saunders)
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Date: Sun, 29 Jan 1995 22:27:41 GMT
Lines: 42

>-=>What I'm trying to stress here is that we consider the question
>-=>of lies behind our certainty that we are ourselves conscious.
>-=>What is it about our insight into our own consciousness that
>-=>cannot be applied to the consciousness of others?
>
>Well, I thought that is fairly obvious. We do not have to deduce
>that we are conscious, it is a matter of very direct experience.
>To discover consciousness in others, I have to gather various 
>experiences in my relationship with other beings I want to 
>affirm consciousness in and integrate these experiences in such a
>way that consciousness is the only conclusion I can come to
>in deciding how this being behaves. This, of course, depends 
>upon my capability to imagine acceptable alternatives. Since I 
>can imagine at least one alternative that I find acceptable
>(no matter how distastefull I find this alternative) I cannot
>assume consciousness in others without doubts.
>
>A similar problem is that of whether there is anyone on the
>internet except me. There is an exceedingly faint possibility
>that Bell Labs has constructed an artificial intellect 
>powerful enough to simulate all those people out there who 
>seem to be posting, and whom I am reading. There is a 
>possibility that you are an idea in an electronic circuit.

I too have been haunted by this. What if everyone in the world
is just a figment of your own imagination? The world really does revolve
around you, because all the world is is your sensory input. There is no
reason to think of yourself as insignificant next to the rest of the human
population, because you are all you really know exists. It can get pretty
scary.

Consciousnes: whether there is someone inside a mind, and not just
neural processes interacting with input and generating output. But how can
you tell? Why are you inside this skull and not inside, for example,
everyone on the earth's brain at the same time? Could it be called a soul?

--
Daniel Saunders
And still mysteries abound...
-- 
Daniel Saunders
And still mysteries abound...
