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From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Thought Question
Message-ID: <D2z7vy.EAz@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <1995Jan12.184559.2530@galileo.cc.rochester.edu> <D2KrBv.ExL@spss.com> <1995Jan20.153230.27315@gdunix.gd.chalmers.se> <D2xLr5.Axr@spss.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 19:38:22 GMT
Lines: 31
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai.alife:1958 comp.ai.philosophy:24944 comp.ai:26787

In article <D2xLr5.Axr@spss.com>, Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> wrote:
>In article <1995Jan20.153230.27315@gdunix.gd.chalmers.se>,
>Claes Andersson <sa209@utb.shv.hb.se> wrote:
>> The other way around.. he refers to the part of our conciosness that obviously
>>can't have any meaning, at least nothing that means that it can't be substituted
>>with another function. Think about how many choises we make without our
>>conciousness swithced on. Don't you think that the rest of it could be "wired"
>>in the same way. If something hurts, why don't the body just retract the limb from
>>the source of pain and store the situation = The same result as you can hope to
>>get with a self awareness.
>
>A reflex movement of the limb would often be a very stupid strategy.  
>Consciousness allows more intelligence to be brought to bear on the problem
>of what to do about the pain.

From my experience, the consciousness is useful in very novel situations,
which we have not encountered before and we have no inborn (like the reflex
movement) or learned ways of dealing with. Human body is capable of very
complex movements, performed in nearly perfect correlation with unstructured
moves in the environment (look at good athletes), without any participation
of consciousnes (in fact an attempt to employ consciousness in such situations
is usually disastrous), but only after the body has been consciously taught
to perform those movements, so that one no longer has to think about them.

Andrzej

-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Instructional and Research Computing  what they think and not what they see.
pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca                           Huang Po
