From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!spool.mu.edu!darwin.sura.net!cs.ucf.edu!news Wed Sep 23 16:54:21 EDT 1992
Article 6970 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Thought? Physical processes? Inside? Outside?
Message-ID: <1992Sep18.130314.1566@cs.ucf.edu>
Date: 18 Sep 92 13:03:14 GMT
References: <JJ.92Sep17171659@medulla.cis.ohio-state.edu>
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In article <JJ.92Sep17171659@medulla.cis.ohio-state.edu>  
jj@medulla.cis.ohio-state.edu (John Josephson) writes:
> 
> >> There seems to me to be no evidence that awareness has anything
> >> that can reasonably be called a location.
> 
> There is plenty of evidence that awareness goes away when the brain
> stops working.  And plenty of evidence that awareness ``gets funny''
> when certain chemicals are ingested that appear to have their major
> effects in the brain.  In fact the evidence is so overwhelming that
> awareness is brain-dependent, that it takes a special sort of
> blindness not to see it.
> 
Actually, I have sometimes tried to introspect the nature of 
consciousness/awareness while my brain was affected by various
substances.  My experiences have mostly been limited to C2H5OH.
(but lately caffiene has been producing unwanted effects:-(

Most times I find that no matter how much the membranes of my
neurons are messed about by the effects of ethyl alcohol, a
nucleus that is my consciousness remains.  On the few occassions
when I have gone "one drink over the line",  external observers
report that my behavior has not changed all that much, although
I have no consious recollection of these events.  

One explanation is that the brain supports a "physical intelligence"
on top of which conciousness rides as an epipheonomena as long
as certain crucial conditions are met in the brain.  

Of course, another explanation is that the drug messes up the long 
term memory mechainism so that nothing different happens over the
line; you just can't remember it.  This is the common explanation.

Maybe this says that the epiphenomena of consciousness is crucially
tied up with memory.  Without memory we would be qualia-less
automatons?

Continuing to unreliably introspect ...
--
Thomas Clarke
Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central FL
12424 Research Parkway, Suite 300, Orlando, FL 32826
(407)658-5030, FAX: (407)658-5059, clarke@acme.ucf.edu


