X-Message-Number: 25105
From: "John de Rivaz" <>
Subject: qualia etc
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 15:03:01 -0000

I found on Amazon a book called Consciousness: An Introduction by Susan
Blackmore. She also wrote The Meme Machine.

I have not read this book yet, but you can see details on
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=019515343X/longevitybooksA/
and also get a chance to read some of it on line and even search the
contents for keywords. There is no reference to "cryonics" "Ettinger" and so
on, but plenty to "soul" "death" and words like that.

UK people who want to buy it without paying transatlantic postage can use
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0340809094/longevityreport
but the review here isn't as interesting as on the UK site and the
opportunity to browse isn't there.

From the review on the US Amazon page:

>>>
The easy problem, Blackmore says, is explaining each of the functional parts
of the brain, such as "the discrimination of stimuli, focusing of attention,
accessing and reporting mental states, deliberate control of behavior, or
differences between waking and sleep." In contrast, the hard problem in
consciousness studies "is experience: what it is like to be an organism, or
to be in a given mental state." Adding up all of the solved easy problems
does not equal a solution to the hard problem. Something else is going on in
private subjective experiences--called qualia--and there is no consensus on
what it is. Dualists hold that qualia are separate from physical objects in
the world and that mind is more than brain. Materialists contend that qualia
are ultimately explicable through the activities of neurons and that mind
and brain are one. Blackmore, uniquely qualified to assess all comers (she
sports multihued hair, is a devotee of meditation, and studies altered
states of consciousness), allows the myriad theorists to make their case
(including her own meme-centered theory) so that you can be the judge.
Making a strong case for the materialist position is Gerald M. Edelman's
latest contribution, Wider Than the Sky, offered as a "concise and
understandable" explanation of consciousness "to the general reader."
Concise it is, but as for understandable, Edelman understates: "It will
certainly require a concentrated effort on the part of the reader."
<<<

Even if consciousness is an illusion, it is what we are and what we have. If
in fact it in a philosophical sense doesn't even survive sleep, or general
anaesthesia, or loss because of a blow to the head, then everyone who has
lived through such events is still considered to have survived, so too will
they if they undergo a cryopreservation now and reanimation in the future
cycle. So in a way all of this is irrelevant. However if the greater
understanding of consciousness enables cryonicists to perfect methods to
preserve life
 at least to the same standard as it is preserved through these events, then
at least cryopreserved people are no worse off.
-- 
Sincerely, John de Rivaz:  http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including
Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley
Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy,  Nomad .. and
more

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