An excellent question from Harry . . . .
So when I don't remember anything about those towns, from a few minutes
ago on my road trip, is it because (a) the attentional mechanism did not
bother to lay down any episodic memory traces, so I cannot bring back the
memories and analyze them, or (b) that I was actually not experiencing any
qualia during that time when I was on autopilot?
I believe that the answer is (a), and that IF I can stopped at any point
during the observation period and thought about the experience I just had,
I would be able to appreciate the last few seconds of subjective
experience.
So . . . . what if the *you* that you/we speak of is simply the attentional
mechanism? What if qualia are simply the way that other brain processes
appear to you/the attentional mechanism?
Why would "you" be experiencing qualia when you were on autopilot? It's
quite clear from experiments that human's don't "see" things in their visual
field when they are concentrating on other things in their visual field (for
example, when you are told to concentrate on counting something that someone
is doing in the foreground while a man in an ape suit walks by in the
background). Do you really have qualia from stuff that you don't sense
(even though your sensory apparatus picked it up, it was clearly discarded
at some level below the conscious/attentional level)?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Loosemore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <agi@v2.listbox.com>
Sent: Monday, November 17, 2008 1:46 PM
Subject: **SPAM** Re: [agi] A paper that actually does solve the problem of
consciousness
Harry Chesley wrote:
On 11/14/2008 9:27 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote:
I completed the first draft of a technical paper on consciousness the
other day. It is intended for the AGI-09 conference, and it can be
found at:
http://susaro.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/draft_consciousness_rpwl.pdf
Good paper.
A related question: How do you explain the fact that we sometimes are
aware of qualia and sometimes not? You can perform the same actions
paying attention or "on auto pilot." In one case, qualia "manifest,"
while in the other they do not. Why is that?
I actually *really* like this question: I was trying to compose an answer
to it while lying in bed this morning.
This is what I started referring to (in a longer version of the paper) as
a "Consciousness Holiday".
In fact, if start unpacking the idea of what we mean by conscious
experience, we start to realize that it inly really exists when we look at
it. It is not even logically possible to think about consciousness - any
form of it, including *memories* of the consciousness that I had a few
minutes ago, when I was driving along the road and talking to my companion
without bothering to look at several large towns that we drove through -
without applying the analysis mechanism to the consciousness episode.
So when I don't remember anything about those towns, from a few minutes
ago on my road trip, is it because (a) the attentional mechanism did not
bother to lay down any episodic memory traces, so I cannot bring back the
memories and analyze them, or (b) that I was actually not experiencing any
qualia during that time when I was on autopilot?
I believe that the answer is (a), and that IF I can stopped at any point
during the observation period and thought about the experience I just had,
I would be able to appreciate the last few seconds of subjective
experience.
The real reply to your question goes much much deeper, and it is
fascinating because we need to get a handle on creatures that probably do
not do any reflective, language-based philosophical thinking (like guinea
pigs and crocodiles). I want to say more, but will have to set it down in
a longer form.
Does this seem to make sense so far, though?
Richard Loosemore
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agi
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