On 15 Jun 2002, at 14:27, Russell Standish wrote: > > No the issue concerns any conscious "program", rather than any > particular one. The fact that there are vastly more amoeba than homo > sapiens tends to argue against amoebae being consious. >
This remind me of Jack Vance novels "Alastor". One of the characters is the king that rules over a vast area of the galaxy. He likes to travel incognito among his subjects, and he often ask himself the question: "There is billions of men and only one king. How is it possible that it happens that I am the king ?" Do your position about this is that subjects are not conscious, only kings? >From a third-person point of view (the reader of the novel), the question is simple. There is billions of subjects, and they can all ask themselves "Why I am me and not someone else ?". The problem is we have only a first-person point of view on our universe (or on the "everything"). We must use our imagination, to do thought experiments, to get a third-person point of view. Matthieu. -- http://matthieu.walraet.free.fr
