From: Laycock, Jos (OSPT) (Jos.Laycock@OFFSOL.GSI.GOV.UK)
Date: Mon Sep 05 2005 - 10:55:53 BST
Morning Ham
I am feeling a little mis-represented, my assertion is that consciousness
arises as a product of neuronal complexity. I have not said that its nature
can be empirically determined by looking at neurones, nor did I intend to.
I find almost all of the rest of the below compatible with my own thoughts
with the few exceptions:
None of the biological level can be understood by "looking at the
schematic", clearly the arrangement of inorganic SPOVs says nothing about
the electrical impulses that flood through it and define it as alive. The
television set analogy is right but in my view doesn't as an argument, make
consciousness any different from action potentials.
Re-stating my views from an earlier thread, I think that pain is the emotion
which we experience that is generated by consciousness (as I describe it) in
response to negative quality.
Dissection will show you nociceptive afferent nerve impulses, why can't we
accept that these communicate NDQ to consciousness which then generates
pain. In fact I have always found the hot stove to be a bit shaky as in my
experience when you touch something really hot, first it feels cold, then
there is a time lag which you can definitely perceive, then spinal level
reflexes withdraw the limb and just afterwards it hurts. I remain to be
convinced that it really says much about consciousness or quality but at a
pinch I would suggest that the time lag could relate to communication
between the static levels and the sequence of perceived events happens in
that order according to how many trans level communication steps there have
been.
The burn happens and biology responds to inorganic heat, biological
communication happens with consciousness giving the first unmodified
sensation, biology also communicates with biology and muscles contract.
The burn also is an analogy for negative quality which for us to perceive
must be converted into an idea, then a culturally acceptable event, then
matched to a biological event and then, communicated to consciousness.
Consciousness then communicates with cultural setting, and generates pain.
In the same way that "you cant talk a crime to death", I don't think "you"
can think a muscle into moving.
Jos
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk
[mailto:owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk]On Behalf Of hampday@earthlink.net
Sent: 04 September 2005 09:25
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Subject: Re: MD Consciousness/MOQ, definition of
Hi Jos, Scott, Arlo, Ian, David, and all --
Jos Laycock said:
> I think the "materialist error" assertion is wrong.
> Consciousness in my view is simply a very moral and
> highly evolved part of the biological level and as such
> definitely IS derived from neuronal(/glial cell) complexity.
Scott said:
> Here is why I think this pursuit is foolishness.
>
> First, assume that all relevant factors are strictly spatio-
> temporal. (If one denies this assumption, for example,
> by bringing in quantum non-locality, then all bets are off,
> since the question is whether or not consciousness arose
> in time.)
Arlo said;
> "Individuals" (as Ham and Platt use the word) do not
> "have" intellect. Individuals are an intellectual pattern.
Ian said:
> In order to make progress I'm trying to encourage some
> debate on what kinds of consciousness and intellect we
> think we're talking about. The problem is lumping it all
> together and thinking we can have a meaningful conversation
> with a single thing called consciousness (or intellect)
> as the subject of sentences.
David Zentgraf (who started this thread) said:
> I agree that choosing an appropriate definition for consciousness
> (or, the other way around, a fitting term for what I'm talking about)
> might be one of the toughest things to begin with. So I'd like to
> think of consciousness for now as "the process of creation of
> thoughts and (self-) awareness". If that's making enough sense...
I think David's approach makes the most sense of all. I say this because
thinking of consciousness in terms of patterns and neurons will get you
nowhere. But even David wants to reduce consciousness to "the process of
creating thoughts and awareness." And that approach is akin to, as someone
here suggested, trying to understand the meaning of a TV image by studying
the schematic.
Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to a wholly new way of understanding
consciousness -- the only way, IMO, that can achieve the intellectual
breakthough you're all seeking. I'll even use Pirsig's all-too-familiar
"hot stove" analogy, so as not to be accused of injecting some self-serving
concept of my own here.
As I see it, the major elements in this analogy are a hot stove, a human
body sitting on the stove, the pain experienced by the body, and something
called Quality to which the experience is referenced. Eliminating the last
item (because it's theoretical and doesn't really add to these elements),
we're left with "stove", "body", and "pain". Now which of these three items
doesn't belong to this set, and why?
Can there be any doubt that there's something very different about pain?
The stove and the body sitting on it are universally definable objects whose
existence can be empirically established. Pain is a proprietary sensation,
the awareness of which can only be experienced by the person feeling it. (I
find it interesting that Pirsig doesn't actually mention pain in relating
this analogy; he leaves it to be inferred as a type of Quality.)
Now the experience of pain might be regarded as pre-intellectual, in the
sense that it is conceivably the first conscious sensation of the unborn
fetus -- its introduction to the world of experience and the cognizance that
follows. Pain is the paradigm for all conscious awareness: it is
proprietary to the individual, incapable of empirical validation, and
unlocalizable in time and space. If pain is not an "existent" then what is
it? It's a subjective "feeling"; it's what the individual knows is real
because he is directly in touch with it. You can't feel my pain, no matter
how empathetic you are, but you can't deny its reality to me. Is pain due
to trauma that irritates the nerve endings, sending messages of distress to
the brain? In materialistic terms, yes; but that's the circuit "schematic",
the routing and processing of information as electrical pulses. You can
dissect this neuronic tissue cell by cell but you won't find the pain.
Everything in the universe, including the universe as a whole, is an "other"
to me. Yet, my awareness, my feelings, my thoughts, my concepts, my values
are all identified with my conscious self and no one else's. Without them I
am nothing. Because consciousness is uniquely proprietary to every
individual, the experience of reality is likewise proprietary. Moreover, if
the individual's experience is what creates or structures this reality,
essentially we're dealing with a "subjective" world. If it weren't for the
"universality" (i.e., commonality) of empirical knowledge, we would have
concluded long ago that physical reality is a solipsism.
The fact that the intellect, awareness or consciousness has a biological
contingency -- that we couldn't experience without a brain and nervous
system that evolved from Nature, that we can measure nerve energy in
microvolts, or make consciousness dysfunctional by chemical injection, or
that we can compile the thoughts and ideas of individuals into a cultural
database called "Intellect" -- all this is beside the point. Because
conscious awareness is subjective it is unlike anything else in the realm of
scientific or philosophical investigation. We can't create it, localize it,
measure it, universalize it, predict it, or even prove it. But, if the
truth be told, it's the most "genuine" reality we have.
Have I sparked any new ideas, or do you all fail to see the relevancy of
this rambling discourse?
Essentially yours,
Ham
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