Consciousness?

[Prevaricator]

What do you think consciousness is exactly? And how was it evolved?

I think consciousness has to do with an individual's self recognition primarily, but it has to be able to act on outside stimuli voluntarily; there has to be choice. I dont think consciousness can exist under determinism. Does it have anything to do with emotion, or is the ability to sense and react to stimuli at one's own discretion.

And once you define it, could you create artificial beings who possess it? Like computers for example?

[bohemian]

Hindu/New Age/Eastern religion view: consciousness is the screen on which various images are flashed. As a screen, it is intact and fundamentally uneffected by anything that is flashed on it.

[David Steele]

.... but it has to be able to act on outside stimuli voluntarily; there has to be choice. I dont think consciousness can exist under determinism.

I don't see what the problem with derterminism is but if you think randomness e.g. quantum fluctuations help, why do you prefer this over say a good random number algorithim ( that is deterministic ).

Random fluctutations don't make choice any easier in general, it means when you chose you have to overcome the noise. If I get to pick I prefer determinism to improve the choice making capability.

D.

[drudman]

[ QUOTE ]
What do you think consciousness is exactly? And how was it evolved?

I think consciousness has to do with an individual's self recognition primarily, but it has to be able to act on outside stimuli voluntarily; there has to be choice. I dont think consciousness can exist under determinism. Does it have anything to do with emotion, or is the ability to sense and react to stimuli at one's own discretion.

And once you define it, could you create artificial beings who possess it? Like computers for example?

[/ QUOTE ]

"Consciousness" is an imaginary characteristic present only in entities that are capable of believing they have it.

[jakethebake]

[ QUOTE ]
"Consciousness" is an imaginary characteristic present only in entities that are capable of believing they have it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Go back to sleep. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Dan Mezick]

Consciousness is hard to define and most authors on it describe their definition explicitly at the start of their papers on this subject.

This domain is currently tagged "Consciousness Studies" in academia. If you Google that, the reading is pretty interesting.

See :
Consciousnes Studies on Google (http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Philosophy/Philosophy_of_Mind/Consciousness_Studies/)

The emerging paradigm is that consciousness is based on language and is mostly learned. This has some interesting (perhaps profound) implications regarding intentional study and active effort focused on consciousness development.

See also:
Poker and Consciousness (http://www.pokerfyi.com/articles/4/15.aspx)

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