On 21 May 2011, at 19:13, meekerdb wrote:
On 5/21/2011 4:04 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 20 May 2011, at 19:44, meekerdb wrote:
On 5/20/2011 3:54 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 18 May 2011, at 18:54, meekerdb wrote:
On 5/18/2011 9:21 AM, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Hi Brent,
Interesting! If we follow this idea, that memory is not
necessary for consciousness, then consciousness does not
require a persistent structure to supervene upon. No?
Onward!
Stephen
I don't see how that follows.
Me too. Consciousness requires logically the entire arithmetical
reality, for example (with mechanism). Without 2+2=4, there is no
consciousness, nor computation, nor matter.
"Require" in what sense: logical, nomological,...? We know that
a blow to the head can interrupt consciousness
We don't know that. With comp nothing interrupt consciousness.
I have experienced it, a gap in my consciousness. Of course you
may say it is only a gap in my memory of consciousness, but a loss
of memory can be induced in by drugs that do not cause one to be
unresponsive at the time which is not remembered. This tells me
that being unconscious is more that just not remembering.
and erase memories.
That can indeed happens locally and relatively. And that can give
the feeling of having been unconscious.
Bruno
But consciousness is a matter of having feelings. Why credit
feelings of being conscious but not those of having been
uncouscious.
But those are always extrapolations.
Almost everything we think about the world is extrapolations.
I can't agree more, but not everything we live. Consciousness here and
now is not an extrapolation. And unconsciousness is not well defined,
and does not make much sense in the mechanist theory.
The feeling of being conscious in the present is undoubtable. The
feeling of being unconscious in the present is contradictory.
But the feeling of having been unconscious is not. And it works
nicely as an explanation of why I'm lying on the ground looking up a
stranger who is saying, "Are you all right?" and I don't remember
how I got there.
But I am working in a theory, and I suggest that in such a theory you
were disconnected from a reality, not unaware of *any*reality.
This goes back to the question of the role of memories and whether
memory is essential to consciousness. You may hypothesize that
nothing interrupts consciousness,
I think it is a consequence of mechanism. This is something already
defended by Descartes. With some training I think it is not so
difficult to realize that we are conscious in all the phases of
sleep, but we forget it very easily.
I wasn't thinking of sleep. I've been anesthetized and I've been
knocked unconscious. Of course you can claim that I was really
conscious, just paralyzed and unresponsive and I've just forgotten
it, but that seems like a stretch. Or that my consciousness is
continuous in a 1st person sense - although this seems contrary to
all those who take OMs to be discrete.
The 3-OMs are discrete. But the 1-OMs are not, although the math have
only been scratched.
or make it true by a definition that denies physical (3rd person)
time.
Why? Only absolute 3rd person time is denied. But this is common
among physicists too, and almost obvious in the mechanist frame.
One could claim that while I was unconscious that no (3p) time
passed - contrary to the reports of everyone else. That's not what
physicist claim when they deny absolute time.
They are related. Consciousness, which is intrinsically first person,
does not supervene on computations, but on their mathematical
organization, taking into account the first person view and its a
priori huge 1-indeterminacy.
You might still use the 1-1 identity thesis brain-mind, but it is a
many-one relation. Things are more complex. I just try to help people
to intuit that amazing and counterintuitive complexity, in the comp
frame (assumed by everybody, but not always consciously).
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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