On Aug 16, 7:35 pm, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > On 8/16/2011 12:37 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > On Aug 16, 1:44 pm, meekerdb<meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > > >> On 8/16/2011 10:16 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > >>> It's not only possible, it absolutely is otherwise. I move my arm. I > >>> determine the biochemical reactions that move it. Me. For my personal > >>> reasons which are knowable to me in my own natural language and are > >>> utterly unknowable by biochemical analysis. It's hard for me to accept > >>> that you cannot see the flaw in this reasoning. > > >> It's not a flaw in his reasoning, it's description at a different > >> level. While it is no doubt true that you, the whole you, determine to > >> move your arm; it seems not to be the case that the *conscious* you does > >> so. Various experiments starting with Libet show that the biochemical > >> reactions that move it occur before you are conscious of the decision to > >> move it. > > > You make the decision before the reporting part of you can report it > > is all. It's still you that is consciously making the decision. It's > > just because we are applying naive realism to how the self works and > > assuming that the narrative voice which accompanies consciousness and > > can answer questions or push buttons is the extent of consciousness. > > Now you're changing the definitions of words again. What does > "conscious" mean, if not "the part of your thinking that you can report > on." I would never claim that you didn't make the decision - it's just > that "you" is a lot bigger than your consciousness.
Consciousness is a very broad term, with different meanings especially in different contexts; medical vs philosophical vs vernacular, macrocosmic vs microcosmic, legal, ethical, etc. For the mind/body question and Turing emulation I try to use 'consciousness' specifically to mean 'awareness of awareness'. The other relevant concept though is perceptual frame of reference, or PRIF. In this case, when you put awareness under a microscope, the monolithic sense of 'consciousness' is discarded in favor of a more granular sense of multiple stages of awarenesses feeding back on each other. When you look at electrical transmission in the brain over milliseconds and microseconds, you have automatically shifted outside of the realm of vernacular consciousness and into microconscious territories. Just as the activity of cells as a whole is beyond the scope of what can be understood by studying molecules alone, the study of the microconscious is too short term to reveal the larger, slower pattern of our ordinary moment to moment awareness of awareness. Raw awareness is fast, but awareness of awareness is slower, the ability to awareness of awareness to be communicated through motor channels is slower still, and the propagation of motor intention through the efferent nerves through the spinal cord is quite a bit slower. It's really not comparing apples to apples then if you look at the very earliest fraction of a second of an experience and compare it with the time it takes for the experience to be fully explicated through all of the various perceptual and cognitive resources. It's completely misleading and mischaracterizes awareness in yet another attempt to somehow prove for the sake of validating our third person observations, that in fact we cannot really be alive and conscious, we just think we are. I think it's like a modern equivalent of 'angels dancing on the head of a pin'. > > > If moving my arm is like reading a book, I can't tell you what the > > book is about until I actually have read it, but I still am initiating > > the reading of the book, and not the book forcing me to read it. > > Another non-analogy. Is this sentence making you think of a dragon? A dragon? No. Why would it? Why is it 'another' non-analogy? Is this 'another' ad hominem non-argument? Craig -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
