Re: Consciousness "Hard Problem"

From: slavek krepelka (slavek.krepelka_at_sympatico.ca)
Date: 12/17/04 

Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 21:27:06 -0800

Hi Consc,

You maul it over a bit too much. Every dog licking its balls knows it is
its own balls which are itching. If it did not, it would lick any other
other dogs balls, or a tree. Is that plain enough? Is that enough to
recognize that dogs are self aware?

Have you noticed that I used the word "self" before "aware"? Are you
aware that there is a close link and a subtle difference between aware
and self aware? That the recognition by any creature of the environment
apart from themselves actually spells out awareness of both, the self as
well as all the other?

Your questions on awareness do not deal with awareness as such, but with
your befuddlement with the concept. You think that you think in words.
May be you do. I suppose that is quite often the case with a lot of
people and I do it too now and than. It actually helps a lot when I am
typing (G). But that does not mean that thinking, or thinking in words
in particular, is relevant to awareness. It also does not mean that the
capability to speak some human tongue is a condition of either thinking,
or awareness. Awareness is both, a conscious process in thinking
creatures, such as dogs, ravens and a few humans, as well as a
subconscious "process" which knows no human language, common to all
living "entities". This includes lets say an aspen colony, magic
mushrooms, bacteria and platypus.

Any living organism with any sensory capability has developed the
capability for no other reason, but to help it identify what, where and
most of all what is It (Itself) and what is the other "dog". Every such
creature may not necessarily ponder whether it exists and why, but it
knows the difference between itself and all what is outside its self, as
far as it understands it. Therefore, awareness is a state of accepted
knowledge, or better said of its subjective interpretation, rather than
a way of thinking.

Now this thread is about consciousness. The way I understand it,
consciousness is again more or less state of knowledge gathered from
perception and it does not matter if that perception is shared through
senses, or lets say a word, or a feeling. You seem to have a problem not
with what is consciousness per se, but with the degree of consciousness
across the spectra of creatures you are aware of. Well. What do we know?
It can't be really measured by human standards, because humans in
general, but the tediously educated humans in particular, have
suppressed the meager animal capabilities of sensing, which we western
humans have been left with after birth, mostly thanks to the Jesuit
evolution of mental manipulation of the general western population.

If I were to talk quantitatively, I would state that the more ways of
being aware a creature may possess, the more it is conscious. The more
of the sensory ways a creature may have at its disposal, and the more
far reaching and sensitive these are, the more conscious the creature
is, because consciousness is knowledge of something and it is also
question of some kind of identification and subjective understanding,
i.e. interpretation.

Thinking is a quantum leap in the capability of a creature to arbitrate
its decision making based on awareness, or better said its
interpretation with the many unknowns, as well as consciousness, but
that is another can of worms.

We have no way of telling the degree of consciousness in other species.
We are only capable of blind and wild guesswork based on our own
abilities and debilities. Mirrors and visual self recognition have
nothing to do with it. If a dog were to test your awareness, it might
nudge you to smell a piece of ***. Your (assumed) (G) disinterest, or
disgust, might be interpreted by the dog in a few ways.

1) Consc is not aware what an interesting subject this piece of *** is
and therefore does not deserve the title of an aware creature.

2) Consc is disinterested in a female *** and therefore he is either
mutilated (castrated) or naturally impotent, or I better watch my back.

3) Poor Consc has no sense of smell.

I will tell you something. I have worked at a company which had opaque
glass paneling below the ground level office windows. Year after year, a
whole bunch of ravens came in the fall for a few weeks and made quite a
ruckus fighting their own images and images of their fellow ravens on
these panels. I have eventually realized that they did it for the fun of
it. Is that consciousness? Is that awareness? I would say it is both.

I had a dog which made up a lie on the spot and fooled me. Is that
thinking? I would say it is. Is it necessarily thinking in words? No. Is
it thinking in images? I doubt that, but I can't dismiss that. Is it
abstract thinking? It sure is. Do we have any way to recognize to what
degree dogs think? Hardly. Can we interpret monkey behavior in front of
a mirror as self-conscious, or self aware act?

Let me ask you something: "have you ever made faces at yourself in the
mirror? I would say that you understood, made an interpretation of the
sensory input, that the image in the mirror is actually you, or better
said has something to do with you. I bet you that monkey had as much fun
making faces and that it had been as self aware and aware of the fact
that the image was not quite itself, as you were. Of course the monkey
is aware and conscious, self aware and selfconscious. It just is not
intelligent, or stupid enough to worry about the obvious.
 
Does that make any sense, or is it too simple?

My kind regards, Slavek.
 
P.S. sorry about the cross posting, I have not started it. I came from
the alt. physics new theories.

P.S. Ah, yeah. The next one, right? The communication medium and process
of info shared among biological entities, including some humans. May be.
But be aware that physics deals with the physical and that the physical
is that, which does posses the property of inertia (not necessarily
mass). You are barking up a wrong tree. But the QT's notion of virtual
particles sort of gets near the fire even among the physicists.

Consc wrote:
>
> Guys,
>
> Do you think some animals self-aware?
>
> They say getting them to a mirror would tell. If they
> recognize themselves. They are self-aware. But when you
> see an ape that sees itself at the mirror and make faces,
> open mouth. How do you know they really recognize it is
> them or just a visual exploration, maybe the ape is
> seeing effects of movement without concluding that arm
> in the mirror is its own.
>
> If a scientist can make apes more intelligence like maybe
> add brain cells. Do you think it would make them
> self-aware eventually? I wonder what is the first
> moment when they would say "I am I, an ape"
>
> C.

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