From: Brent Allsop (allsop@swttools.fc.hp.com)
Date: Tue Jul 08 1997 - 17:10:02 MDT
Wax <YakWax@aol.com> responded:
> Personally, I believe that we will be surprised by the abundance of
> consciousness when we do finally 'discover' it.
I think you are probably right. But there must be something
that brings it all together into one conscious world. Not only must
it exist, it must exist in a way that it can be collected into and
produce the entire world of our complete awareness. There may be some
elemental part of consciousness in all of physics but until it is
brought into a conscious space or world it isn't of much use. I would
imagine that integrating multiple conscii is an exponentially complex
problem. I would bet that there can't simply be a global
consciousness without lots of brain like machinery to make it so. The
equivalent of shared conscious space between two brains would likely
be many times more complex than a single brain and the equivalent of 4
mind melded brains would be many times more complex than just 4 brains
and so on exponentially. I would bet that we will have shared
conscious worlds, but as far as a global consciousness... without
infinite computing resources like we might have in an omega point, I
would bet that it would be impossible.
> I'm going to be wildly speculative here: Could it be that
> consciousness is a product of any logic (not just highly complex
> networks such as our brain).
Logic is simply a set of rules that specify a particular
behavior. There must be something physical which implements or
instantiates or performs this behavior. I see no reason why logic
does anything outside of whatever the particular physical phenomenon
that is performing the logic is directly responsible for. There must
be some actual physical phenomenon that is producing the consciousness
and it is this conscious phenomenon that represents or instantiates or
performs the logic of our minds. The conscious phenomenon of our
minds are able to perform logical operations, it doesn't arise from
that logic.
> Of course, consciousness could simply be the product of some
> chemical, or brain pattern that we have evolved over the years.
Physical phenomenon don't evolve do they? But entities
abilities to use various physical phenomenon to better survive do
evolve.
> Whatever it is, if it exists we'll find it, it's just a matter of
> time.
YES! YES! I bet this will be the most significant world
changing discovery to date.
Brent Allsop
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