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From: reh@wam.umd.edu (Richard E. Huddleston)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Consciousness
Message-ID: <1990Oct27.070636.4144@wam.umd.edu>
Date: 27 Oct 90 07:06:36 GMT
References: <10126@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
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In article <10126@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> larryc@poe.jpl.nasa.gov (Larry Carroll) writes:
>Consciousness is part of the Universe, therefore it must affect other parts
>of the Universe.  (As evidenced by all this debate about the topic, which
>wouldn't exist if it weren't for the subject of the debate!)  Just how we can
>objectively observe & measure it is unclear, of course, because we know so
>little about the form & function of the organ that generates it.  But the
>mere fact that we can't observe it directly & publicly isn't enough reason to
>say it can't be studied.  After all, no one has ever directly & publicly
>observed an atom; we must probe atomic nature indirectly & with instruments.
>(Indeed, it's one of the biggest ironies of this whole debate that the only
>phenomena we CAN observe directly is consciousness.)
>
>Further, the other parts of the Universe can affect consciousness.  Every
>time we sleep we turn our consciousness off (though not for an entire sleep
>period; about every 90 minutes we dream, which is arguably a conscious
>activity).  We can alter consciousness in other ways, through chemical &
>electronic means, through meditation, etc.  The very act of focusing our
>attention on one part of our environment alters our consciousness.  The
>subject of our attention becomes part of our consciousness; other parts of
>the environment disappear from our consciousness.  The process of learning
>affects our consciousness; we become aware of more & at the same time are
>able to relinquish conscious attention to old parts of our subjective
>universe, letting them become automatic processes.
>
>			Larry Carroll
>			"Takes-us" (correct pronunciation of Texas)
>			Dancin' Fool

 
If we can't define consciousness (not that I'm so sure of that), we can at
least study it by it's leavings: memories.  Anything that can _remember_ is
in some way conscious.  Perhaps the problem with defining consciousness 
is similar to defining life; it doesn't have just one form or one aspect.
 
Interestingly, each form of biological life seems to be amply equipped with
just enough consciousness to implement its DNA coding.  Will the same be true
for sufficiently sophisticated computers?  Of course.  The reason we don't see
more consciousness in our technology is that we're still supplying it -- 
therefore the computers themselves don't need it to carry out their end of the
tasks we design them for.  There are some exceptions, of course, but even
human consciousness takes a while to gel into something we'd recognize as such.
I doubt that a properly designed system (one capable of acquiring consciousness)
would start whistling dixie the first time we turned it on.
 
Sleep is an interesting event.  The problems involved with updating information 
in extensively distributed systems has me thinking that perhaps large 
distributed systems will need to "sleep" (and _dream_) for a period of 
time in order to reconcile new data -- and, much like humans deprived of sleep, 
these systems will experience a drastic drop in performance directly 
proportional to their unmet need for sleep.  Of course, the actual unmet need 
is dreaming; perhaps the function of dreaming in biological life forms is to 
integrate previous associations with newly acquired data.  My personal 
experience certainly indicates that periods in my life where I'm doing 
something new and/or intense stimulate vivid and largely remembered dreams.
 
It seems to me that Crick advanced some ideas along this line a few years back.
 
Apologies in advance if I'm merely restating previous arguments; I'm an
undergrad (freshman) who's new to the Net.