X-Message-Number: 22364
From: 
Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 10:06:18 EDT
Subject: try again

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For Scott Badger and others, still another small attempt to clarify my views 
on consciousness.

First the reminder that the problem of consciousness, although probably not 
the most profound of scientific questions, is certainly the most important. 
There is a voluminous literature.

Second, the reminder that everything is tentative and speculative. Not only 
is there broad disagreement, but we lack basic understanding of crucial 
questions in physics and biology, especially the nature of time and space.

But we have to start somewhere, and my starting point is to focus on feeling 
or the quale as the sine qua non of consciousness and being or 

life-as-we-know-it (LAWKI).  (Other aspects of mind, such as memory and 
cognition, are also 

important and possibly vital, but without qualia we certainly have nothing.) We
have not yet been able to characterize the biophysical basis of qualia.

Dr. Badger suggested, as have many others, that consciousness may be 

"emergent," appearing more or less automatically at a sufficiently high level of

information processing. But as far as I can see this explains nothing; it is 
empty 
verbiage. In fact, it is worse than nothing, since it dodges the issue by 
suggesting that there isn't any issue. 

I am not saying the "emergence" is always meaningless. For example, a wheel 
might be considered an emergent property of things getting rounder and rounder 
until finally they are round enough. But the essence of wheelness, or 

roundness, still needs characterization, and in this case it is easy. In the 
case of 
consciousness there is nothing comparable as far as I know.

I have suggested that a quale, or set of qualia, might be based on a standing 
wave in the brain, involving any or all of the possible wave-like phenomena 
of the brain. The basic reason is that we need something which tends to 

homeostasis but can be modulated, and which binds space and time. If qualia have
extension in space and time, then a person does also, and since successors or 

continuers would overlap, we would have objective justification for considering
that the self persists, at least in part. 

Of course, nature is not compelled to consider our preferences, but we need 
first to look at answers we can live with. If the final answers are 

unacceptable, then the only refuge would be delusion, and we are not ready for 
that. 

I think the question was raised, or implied, as to how we can distinguish 
between space and time binding by the self, vs. space and time binding by 

ordinary inanimate material particles. Part of the answer is that a brain 
occupies 

space, while in some theories (now mostly outmoded) elementary particles do not
(resulting in singularities). Any system (such as a wheel) necessarily 

occupies space in a stronger sense than is true for elementary particles. 
Likewise, 
any person must span time in a stronger sense than for simpler particles or 
systems.

Getting back to descriptions and simulations--a description IS a simulation, 
and a simulation IS (merely) a description. Dr. Badger and others reject time 
isomorphism, but I know of no good reason to reject isomorphism for time while 
accepting it for other purposes. Also, as I have said many times with many 

examples, a running computer simulation is NOT fully isomorphic to a person, and
cannot be. Once more, the assertion that a simulation would "be" a person is 
nothing but dogma, with nothing whatever to back it up except the perceived 
elegance of the concept. 

Finally, I have not said that inorganic matter could not support 
consciousness--only that this remains to be seen.

Robert Ettinger

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