Re: Qualia and the Galactic Loony Bin

Harvey Newstrom (newstrom@newstaffinc.com)
Wed, 23 Jun 1999 01:46:31 -0400

Sorry. Maybe I'm just up too late, but I don't see your points at all. I minored in Biology and Psychology in college. I don't see your discussion as being about brains at all. You seem to be using debating tactics and persuasive techniques for argument, but I still haven't seen an actual theory of functionality.

Maybe it is because consciousness is so ill-defined. Some aspects of consciousness, such as memory recall, do seem to require connectivity between neurons and a cause-effect relationship to recall memory. A random pattern of disconnected neurons cannot search for related memories or bring them into the thought process, or trigger the vocal movements needed to speak the thought. I don't see how disjointed patterns with no cause-and-effect can function in any predictable or logical manner.

At the very basic, I don't see how a disjointed pattern of disconnected neurons can change to the next pattern state without causality. Why would they not stay the same forever, or switch to random states that do not mirror consciousness?
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Harvey Newstrom <mailto://newstrom@newstaffinc.com> <http://newstaffinc.com> Author, Consultant, Engineer, Legal Hacker, Researcher, Scientist.