Yes that is the issue and I don't think I read all the postings on that thread at the time. SP [Feb 21]: 'It is a complicated issue'
MP: Yep! SP: 'So how do I know I'm not that special kind of zombie or partial zombie now? I feel absolutely sure that I am not but then I would think that, wouldn't I?' MP: I think the way this asifism thread has been going, it looks like we have A/ 1POV which we experience and remember, and B/ 3POV which is a construction from inference and on-going, informal, Turing tests of everyone we know. We can never _know for certain_ that the other person is aware of being here now in the same way that we ourselves are but we get a leg-up from the mirror neurons that seem able to recognise and emulate the behaviour sequences of people we see. [This is the basis of most human learning, and the brain-side locus of memetic existence, but that's another story.] It is basically that people act like we do and share the same description of the world which leads us to believe they are conscious just like we are, and that's it! End of story; no rocket science involved. For what it is worth, my current surmise on blindsight: the reason sufferers cannot report seeing the stimulus but seem to act as if they ARE seeing it/them is to do with timing; whatever it is that updates that part of their model of self in the world which would be *the representation of their 3D spatial relationship to the stimulus* is out of kilter. Given that the strongest candidate for binding is synchronous, resonant, mutual and reciprocal stimulation patterns, my guess is that damage of some sort is preventing incorporation into the model of the resonance patterns which embody that/those aspects/s of the representation. I think that means the damage could be in 'white matter', ie the communication between cortical areas rather than within them. If the person is able to see other parts of their visual field clearly then _clearly_ there must be effective linkage between the visual cortex and the regions controlling eye movements. This implies that information _about_ stimuli in the blinded part of the visual field is available to some areas of visual cortex and thus may also be available from there to temporal lobe regions dealing with language. If the above is the case, and I reckon it is quite reasonable to think so, then what the blind sight patients describe is understandable. They can look for something which is described to them sufficiently for the verbal information to evoke the working memory storage of task and target information, and this can effect the kind of unconscious searching activity which we are used to. Well I am used to it any way! I hunt around the house or garden for something named and may have no clearly conscious pre-conceived image of it for example my offspring are forever misplacing hair brushes, shoes, and so forth and I often have the experience of looking at the place they turn out to be - which strangely enough is always the last place I think to look for them :-0 and the item just seems to appear out of nowhere. The work of Benjamin Libet and others has shown that conscious registration of something usually follows about 0.4 or 0.5 second after the primary sensory response occurs. With blindsight patients the primary sensory response is occurring and affecting various secondary areas in a useful way but not all of that is available to update the navigational self-model. This ties in with Oliver Sachs's work with many patients who presented with unique and interesting deficiencies of awareness who's autopsies revealed specific lesions within their brains. It conforms with the idea that conscious mental experience is what it is like to be certain processes within the brain. It does not conform with the idea that a 'zombie' could be an effective member of society. The key issue is that in order to function as an effective, self-preserving, autonomous being, a human has to be able to review her actions as soon as they occur and be able to correct and behaviour that is sub optimal or not in line with prior planning. Consciousness is simply what it is like to be this reviewing process. Regards Mark Peaty CDES [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/ Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > On 10/06/07, *Mark Peaty* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: > > * But I agree also that you are highly unlikely to come across > someone who can truthfully say 'I am not conscious'. It seems > totally self-contradictory: for example a person not just with > 'hemi' neglect, but total neglect. How could such a person > encounter themselves or the world? > Or is there the possibility of something like so-called > blindsight in every sensory modality? For example: deaf-hearing, > numb-sensing, proprio-non-ception? This would imply a zombie > [without 'a life'] which survived by making apparently random > guesses about everything yet getting significantly more than > chance success in each modality. > > > See this discussion with Jesse Mazer a few months ago on cortical > blindness: http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/browse_thread/thread/93962ea1b2e09e2/e1dcc437c27c2877?lnk=gst&q=cortical+blindness&rnum=1#e1dcc437c27c2877 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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