From: Tony Csoka (csoka@itsa.ucsf.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 13 1997 - 02:47:31 MST
John K Clark writes:
>Perhaps only a mind that is exactly like mine can be conscious, other
>minds may be intelligent but have no more internal feelings than a rock.
>In my heart I'm convinced that is not true and I'm convinced that you
>can't have intelligence without consciousness, but I'll never be able to
>prove it.
I'm not so sure. I have noticed that I can do certain things, for example
play a very fast game of table tennis, and "loose consciousness".I mean
that the normal process of internal analysis of my thinking, my
"metacognition", is temporalily turned off. It is almost like my ego
disappears. I think this doesen't just apply to sports either. I think the
ego can be temporarily suspended during the intense thought required to
solve a complex mathematical problem, for example. It may even be
beneficial to do so in these circumstances. I am still just as
intelligent, or maybe even more intelligent than I would be with my ego in
full swing.
I think consciousness has a lot to do with memory. For instance, if an AI
machine was designed that had the ability to store as memories the
consequences of it's actions, and form patterns and associations from
those memories, then it might start to develop a consciousness. In other
words, it would be able to develop a clear distinction between itself and
the outside world, which is really the definition of consciousness, or
ego.
Remember that we all start out as id, and that our ego comes along when we
can remember enough of our actions and consequences to form coherent
patterns from them.
Tony Csoka
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