X-Message-Number: 5665
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: Questions for Ettinger
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 1996 00:30:30 +1100 (EST)

Robert Ettinger writes,

>2. Seat or source of feeling and consciousness, the "self circuit" or
>"subjective circuit:" I have merely pointed out that (a) we know it exists
>(whether or not the name is well chosen) since we have feeling and
>consciousness; 

I'm confused about the role that you assign your self-circuit. I don't
know if it will work, but perhaps if I portray an image I have of
consciousness you'll be able to use it make things clearer to me.
Anyway, here goes:

I think my mind is like a flower-garden. All kinds of plants grow
there, many from seeds, many grafted from mature plants, many hybridised
and intertwined, many dying, many flourishing, many strangling others,
many growing together in harmony. Some parts are orderly and ornate like
Versailles, some steamy and lush like a Kipling jungle, some desolate
and smashed like the Never-Never. Here and there are freshly turned
plots, fertile but fallow, just waiting for new growth.

Is your self-circuit like the light, soil and water that feed the plants
and twist their branches? Or is it like their DNA, replicating itself,
shaping their leaves and flowers? Or is it the earth that supports them
and the sky overhead? Or perhaps it is some kind of gardener, planting and
weeding according to a plan of his own?

I've had the impression, though I am not sure, that you mean it to be
like a gardener. If so ...  is he a plant? Does he consume the plants?
Is he made of plants? Or is he just some kind of external process, in
the garden but not of the garden?

Peter Merel.


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