Re: Are you Conscious?

From: Catherine Woodgold (an588_at_freenet.carleton.ca)
Date: 11/02/04 

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 05:26:12 +0000 (UTC)

I think of it this way:

Suppose A is the awareness of the colour red, and
        B is the awareness of both A and B.
Then B is an example of consciousness.

A can be quite simple: a mechanical sensor can detect red.
But B has to be a complex system. I don't think it's as
complex as that big number in Goedel's theorem, but there
may be some similarities. Or maybe we only have imperfect,
incomplete consciousness.

Here's another way to think of it: it would be relatively
easy for neurons to evolve to do arithmetic efficiently.
Numbers would be passed to a certain part of the brain and
the answer would come back very quickly. However, if
this were the case, some individuals might have mutations
or illnesses causing them to get wrong answers; and they
might never notice. Bridges would be build with a hundred
times the necessary thicknesses of beams, etc.

But when one does arithmetic consciously, one is not
only getting the answer, but also at the same time watching
how the answer is arrived at and seeing that it must
be correct.

Consciousness may have evolved as a way to do arithmetic
and many other mental processes in a self-checking,
self-correcting way: in a way such that one can say "no, that's
not right" and meaningfully redo it, without relying
too much on the precise sets of genes and neuronal
connections designed to do each task.

The human brain does not merely calculate that two plus
two is five: it sees that that answer is
correct -- a far more complex task. 

--
Cathy