From: Rob Harris (rob@hbinternet.co.uk)
Date: Tue Nov 30 1999 - 09:41:57 MST
Rob wrote:
>> All base rules, and therefore motivations are out of our control. The
only
>>"freedom" our "intelligence"gets is to come up with the plans that fulfil
>>this predetermined motivation set.>>
Glen wrote:
>I don't think this is strictly true.
Rob added:
What you wrote was exactly what I meant. You just put it across better! The
"plans" I speak of represent the secondary desires that you mention.
Rob wrote:
>>I could go further and mention that we don't control our intelligence
>>either - in fact, that the consciousness is not a control device at all,
but
>>that's another subject.
Glen wrote:
>Please do continue; I would be interested to hear what you believe is
>consciousness.
Ok, Ahem......I've got about 3 minutes left, but I'll whack what I can
down....
If someone put a gun to my head and asked me to guess correctly the function
of consciousness in relation to the rest of the brain, I would say that it
is a conceptual clipboard. Conceptual common ground between the output from
the emotive systems and the intelligent systems and the senses and so on. As
the raw output generated by the various systems is conceptually incompatible
with output from other systems, the data must be translated to a common
conceptual denominator - one that captures the "essence" of each form of
data, without losing data resolution.
For instance, imagine a brain experiencing the triggering factors of fear.
The related system would output it's data - that data would end up in the
consciousness as the effect that we perceive as fear. The other brain
systems are also listening to the consciousness - for data from other areas
that require this conceptual bridge. Next, the intelligence grabs the data -
aggh, fear - it's time to leave it thinks, and off you go. The side effect
is the "you" that actually experiences this fear. You ARE the qualia, the
consciousness, the conceptual clipboard from some backwater somewhere within
eternity. You are here to provide that service to the host organism - and
that's where "your" job ends. Give us your comments on this little bit -
I'll get back to it tommorrow.....gotta go!
Rob
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:05:53 MST