Alrighty then.
Dreams - I do not believe (yet) that we are working off of some kind of soul consciousness, or global consciousness, or sharing of ideas. I think your completely unique dream lands and experiences are just transformations of things and places you have seen. Just because you have never been to a certain place or received some certain information doesn't mean that your brain can't conjure it up. We know countless amounts of symantics and ideas. We can create new things up on the fly with ease.
Senseless baby - Would he feel a gravitational pull? I seriously don't think so. Not only would they not feel wind on their skin, they wouldn't feel a sense of weight. Weight is just the pull on your body, but if you have NO sense of touch then you can't feel your body. It'd be like me grabbing someone's dead arm and playing with it. If they couldn't hear or see or smell or taste me, they wouldn't know I was playing with their arm. And not only would the baby not know it was falling, it would have much, much less of a clue than that. What is falling? What is up? What is down? What is here? WHat is there?
Even the guy with the dead arm would only feel gravity at the point in which is arm is putting weight on his shoulder. He would feel the weight of his arm but not his arm.
Plants and water - Plants do indeed have senses, and that is a good point. But senses are just the first step to consciousness.
I should probably redefine something I said due to a lot of good feedback.
Senses are necessary but not sufficient for consciousness.
With plants though, I wouldn't think there is any perception. It's not like the plant "feels" warmth. It doesn't "feel" the sun. It just knows that it is warm enough for the cells to grow. It knows that there is more light available from one area than another.
These plant senses are the kinds of senses that a computer has, I think. The kind of robotic reflex senses. Pure reactionary impulses driven by the environment.
And water? I don't believe that water thing for a second. I'd like to see some information on that. Water is just hydrogen and oxygen.
dr0mni - That was some good info right there. When I was born, obviously I wasn't thinking of myself as a conscious entity. But I had senses. If I put my hand in a fire I would have moved it. I can at least get some information from my environment. I was at the level of reactionary, robotic senses. However our minds can process alot more information than that from an early age. We are born with simple abilties of empathy as well. We can be distresed if our mothers are distressed. Our brains are born with SOME abilities other than just soaking up the environment like a sponge, but it's pretty useless still. It needs time and information to grow. But this is what you are saying, and I agree with you.
And I actually do believe you when you say that intelligence is largely based on patterns. Once we have lived long enough to start making generalizations, we can start processing information alot faster. Like babies. They need time to allow synaptic connections to take place. They need time to recognize things they see over and over again. And I still agree with you.
Where I DON'T agree with you is that the computer can start to recognize patterns too. A computer will -not- recognize or gain any sort of awareness in it's current state. You could have every bit of information in the world but it doesn't know what this information is! A computer can link apple -> fruit -> food -> edible, etc etc. But it doesn't know what an apple is. It can link apple -> a red fruit, what what is red? What is the letter 'r'. What is the word "what"? What is a "distinction". There is no MEANING to any of the semantics a computer understands. It doesn't even know what a 1 or 0 is, not does it understand quantity. The only thing the computer can do is store a voltage in a register and it is either high enough to be a '1' or low enough to be a '0'. And then it just has preprogrammed 'values' for these combinations which can be combined by preprogrammed methods to reorganize the high and low values.
There is nothing the computer could do right now that would give it any sort of awareness. Even if the computer was 3x faster than a human brain, it wouldn't gain awareness, ever.
And OldWood, I'm going to have to say I think the opposite. Consciousness "stands" on awareness. The senseless baby is not conscious. The senseless baby is dead by all defenitions but the literal.
Before I start
in?fer - verb - To conclude from evidence or premises.
Just in case.
Consciousness evolves by the level of awareness you have. A plant is "aware" that the sun is behind it, but at such a redicuously minute level. Can it infer anything about it's environment? How many suns are there, plant? It doesn't know. And I doubt any animal does. But at least the animal can infer something about it's environment. Animals can't infer MUCH, but they can.
And humans? We have such rediculous abilties to process our information that comes from our awareness it's hilarious. We are incredibly aware. We can form so many patterns and infer SO much from our environment that it's beyond that of any animal or plant. Our brains are more able than any of species to organize the sensory input we see and make distinctions between it. It's -all- about how well we can organize our sensory input.
The sun is up, what does that mean? Nothing to the plant. All it means is that the cells will now photosynthesize. The animal? I'm not sure. It means it's time to go looking for food? Does it mean it's not dark? Do animals understand dark? Perhaps.
But we can infer so much because, like g0mni said, we can form so many patterns. We can process our awareness so much that we become conscious.
Senses -> awareness processing -> consciousness
A computer can have "senses" like a video camera and a microphone, but it doesn't process those inputs in any meaningful way.
I don't think the mystery lies at either Senses, or consciousness. I think we have those both solved. The mystery lies in the middle, in the processing. In finding out the rediculous complexity that is our brain and it's ability to process what we sense.
Edit : And of course, as Morrowind said below this, this is all speculation. I don't KNOW what I said is true obviously, but I believe it.
Edited by freddurgan (03/16/05 11:37 AM)
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Well kind of, but, baby steps.
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