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From: py94tab@ex.ac.uk (Tim Barrass)
Subject: Re: Thought Question
Message-ID: <py94tab-1805951604260001@144.173.2.244>
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Organization: Exeter Uni, UK
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 16:04:26 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai.alife:3432 comp.ai.philosophy:28179 comp.ai:29949

From  <800709088snz@longley.demon.co.uk>
    David Longley <David@longley.demon.co.uk> wrote

> the correlation between WM and R  were 
>     .82,  .88.,  .80  and  .82  for  studies  1  through   4 
>     respectively. 

(cheers! :) ) so there is a correlation between intelligence and memory.
In this case, are we very wrong in looking at memory and intelligence as
two seperate things- out of the interaction of the two arises a
consciousness.
   Obviously (?) there is no cut off point for conscious and
not-conscious- the spectrum runs from rocks (?) to man (although I guess
it's debatable whether we're at the top of the chain :) ) I say rocks- can
we consider rocks as having a memory (in a way they do carry a record of
all the events that have happened to them, in their shape and form) but
not much in the way of intelligence? (In which case they are unable to
correlate all their experiences). Hence they are not self aware- or at
least they lie right at the very bottom of the scale. Where does self
awareness lie in said scale (if self awareness is a result of
consciousness, as seems to be suggested so far)? Come to that, how does
self awareness come about? Is it a leap made on correlation of experiences
so far that leads an organism to realise that it exists and is distinct
from it's surroundings? What constitutes self awareness? At a primitive
level, does it lie in the organism simply reacting to it's surroundings?
(i.e. at which point the organism can tell Me from Not-Me by virtue of
it's senses)

On rethinking this memory+intelligence>consciousness issue I have come
across something else- just because we don't remember doing something,
does it mean we were not conscious at the time? This seems a little like
the "if a tree falls in the wood..." question to me. I think that because
we can remember events at discrete times in our past, we assume that we
have been conscious all that time- how can I prove I was conscious if I
can't remember what happened? This means that we can rely on the
memory-intelligence link as giving us a grading of consciousness in a
hand-waving sort of way, but in a more rigorous argument the memory lapse
would let us down- it depends on our beliefs about continuity. 

Maybe short term memory could be used as a stop gap measure- our
intelligence acts on this memory before it is wiped so at the time we are
conscious (this sounds right to me) and only selects those facts it
considers relevant (dodgy ground here, I think). In this way we would be
conscious all the time.

I think, then that consciousness is a result of an intelligence
correlating all of an organism's experiences. (Hopelessly naive?)
Basically, what I think I'm trying to say is- help?

Tim
