Peter Jones writes (quoting Bruno Marchal): > > People who believes that inputs (being either absolute-material or > > relative-platonical) are needed for consciousness should not believe > > that we can be conscious in a dream, given the evidence that the brain > > is almost completely cut out from the environment during rem sleep. > > The brain didn't evolve to dream.
Clearly the brain *did* evolve to dream, although we don't really understand the evolutionary advantage of dreaming, or for that matter sleeping. But that is beside the point: the question is whether interaction with an external environment is necessary for consciousness, and I think dreaming is one situation which shows that it is not. (To be fair, one could argue that dreaming does involve environmental input in that at the very least there is proprioceptive feedback from the rapid eye movements, and there is no dreaming during non-REM sleep. However, I think that is just a technical detail, as it is easy enough to imagine a brain dreaming without this input, or with the input provided by self-exciting neurons.) Stathis Papaioannou _________________________________________________________________ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
