From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!milano!cactus.org!wixer!sparky Mon Nov  9 09:36:36 EST 1992
Article 7497 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!milano!cactus.org!wixer!sparky
>From: sparky@wixer.cactus.org (Timothy Sheridan)
Subject: Re: definition of consciousness
Message-ID: <1992Nov2.200357.1640@wixer.cactus.org>
Organization: Real/Time Communications
References: <tim.720580709@giaeb> <27525@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 92 20:03:57 GMT
Lines: 32

In article <27525@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>In article <tim.720580709@giaeb> tim@giaeb.cc.monash.edu.au (Tim Roberts) writ
es:
>
>>Consciousness is to the study of the brain what phlogiston is to the study of

>>combustion.
>
>Because consciousness is not a brain phenomenon. It's a property of a
>mind-engaged-in-a-world. You'll no more find consciousness in a brain
>than in an eyeball, although both have useful contributions to make.
>--
>Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
>Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
>5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205


Me thinks he doth trancend too much....

However there is a very powerfull philosophicall point here.  If
consciousness id the sum of all the interactions then that state is expressed
non-localy.   Although, a consciousness neuron would be more local in its
representation it is also somwhat non-local too.   In neural-nets we call non-
local representation 'distruibuted' but the information content is still the
same if the apropo interpreter (observer) is present.

Consciousness then seems to be a distributed event with a distributed
observer....

hmmm.

Timothy Sheridan


