Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!columbia!rutgers!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!lambert@seismo.CSS.GOV@cwi.nl From: lambert@seismo.CSS.GOV@cwi.nl (Lambert Meertens) Newsgroups: mod.ai Subject: Submission for mod-ai Message-ID: <8701230229.AA00526@boring.cwi.nl> Date: Thu, 22-Jan-87 21:29:51 EST Article-I.D.: boring.8701230229.AA00526 Posted: Thu Jan 22 21:29:51 1987 Date-Received: Fri, 23-Jan-87 22:26:56 EST Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 117 Approved: ailist@sri-stripe.arpa Path: mcvax!lambert From: lambert@mcvax.cwi.nl (Lambert Meertens) Newsgroups: mod.ai Subject: Re: C-2 as C-1 Summary: Long again--please skip this article Keywords: mind, consciousness, memory Message-ID: <7259@boring.mcvax.cwi.nl> Date: 23 Jan 87 02:29:51 GMT References: <424@mind.UUCP> <12272599850.11.LAWS@SRI-STRIPE.ARPA> Reply-To: lambert@boring.UUCP (Lambert Meertens) Organization: CWI, Amsterdam Lines: 104 In article <12272599850.11.LAWS@SRI-STRIPE.ARPA> Laws@SRI-STRIPE.ARPA (Ken Laws) writes: >> From: Stevan Harnad : >> >> Worse than that, C-2 already presupposes C-1. You can't >> have awareness-of-awareness without having awareness [...]. > > A quibble: It would be possible [...] that my entire conscious > perception of a current toothache is an "illusory pain" [...]. I agree. > These views do not solve the problem, of course; the C-2 consciousness > must be explained even if the C-1 experience was an illusion. My conscious > memory of the event is more than just an uninterpreted memory of a memory > of a memory ... Here I am not so sure. To start with, the only evidence we have of organisms having C-1 is if they are on the C-2 level, that is, if they *claim* they experience something. Even granting them that they are not lying in the sense of a conscious :-) misrepresentation, why should we (in our quality of scientific enquirers) believe them on their word? After all, more than a few people truly believe they have the most incredible psychic powers. Now how can we know that the "awareness-of-awareness" is a conscious thing? There seems to be a hidden assumption that if someone utters a statement (like "It is getting late"), then the same organisms is consciously aware of the fact expressed in the statement. Normally, I would grant you that, because that is the normal everyday meaning of "conscious" and "aware", but not in the current context in which these words are isolated from their original function to just provide an expedient way to express certain things. [You will find that people in general have no problem in saying that a fly is aware of something, or experiences pain, even though for all we know there is no higher (coordinating) neural centre in this organism that would provide a physiological substrate. Many people even have no problem in ascribing consciousness to trees. I claim that if people (but not young children) do have qualms in saying that an automaton experiences something, it is because they have been *taught* that consciousness is limited to animate, organic, objects.] So the mere speech act "It is getting late" does not by itself imply a conscious awareness of it getting late. Otherwise, we are forced to ascribe consciousness of the occurrence of a syntax error to a compiler mumbling "*** syntax error". Likewise, not only does someone saying "I have a toothache" not imply that the speaker is experiencing a toothache, it also does not imply that the speaker is consciously aware of the (possibly illusionary) fact of experiencing one. The only evidence of that would be a C-3 act, someone saying: "I am aware of the fact that I am aware of experiencing a toothache." But again, why should we believe them? (And so on, ad nauseam.) This is getting so complicated mainly because of the inadequacy of words. Allow me to try again. You, reader, are having a toothache. You are really having one. I can tell, because you are visibly in pain, and, moreover, I am your dentist, and you are in my chair with your mouth open into which I am prodding and probing, and boy, you should have a toothache if anyone ever had one. At this point, I cannot know for sure if you are consciously experiencing that pain. Maybe neural pathways connect your exposed pulpa with the centre innervating your grimacing and squirming muscles while bypassing the centre of consciousness. I retract my instruments from your mouth, giving you a chance to say "That really hurt, doctor. I'll pay all my bills in time from now on if only you won't do that again." Firmly brushing aside the empathy that threatens to compromise my scientific attitude, I realize that this still does not mean that you consciously experienced that pain just a minute ago. All I know is that you remember it (for if you did not, you wouldn't have said that). So some symbolic representation, "@#$%@*!" say, may have been stored in your memory--also bypassing your centre of consciousness--which is now retrieved and interpreted (maybe illusionary) as "conscious experience of pain--just now". This interpretation act need not mean that you experience the pain now, after the fact. So it is entirely possible that you did not consciously experience the pain at any time. Now were you conscious then, while making that silly promise, of at least the memory of the--by itself possibly unconscious--suffering of pain? If you are still with me, then you will probably agree that that is not necessarily the case. Just like P = , even though leaving a trace in memory, need not imply consciousness of P, so R(P) = need not imply consciousness of R(P) itself. However, R(P) can again leave a trace in memory--what with your Silly Promise and dentists' bills being as they are, you are bound to trigger R(SP) and therefore, by association, R(R(P)), many times in the future. If we had two unconnected memory stores, and a switch would now connect to one, now to the other store, we would become two personalities in one body with two "consciousnesses". If we could somehow censor either the storing or the retrieval of pain events, we would truly, honestly believe that we are incapable of consciously experiencing pain--notwithstanding the fact that we would probably have the same *immediate* reaction to pain as other people--and we wouldn't make such promises to our dentists anymore. Wrapping it all up, I still maintain that "conscious experience" is a term that is ascribed *in retrospect* to any neural event NE that has been stored in memory, at the time R(NE) occurs. Stronger, R(NE) is the *only*--as I hope I have shown insufficient--evidence of "consciousness" about NE in a more metaphysical or whatever sense. For all we know and can know, all consciousness in the sense of being conscious of something *while it happens* is an "illusion", whether C-1, C-2 or C-17. -- Lambert Meertens, CWI, Amsterdam; lambert@mcvax.UUCP