Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!mailrus!ncar!boulder!sunybcs!bingvaxu!leah!gbn474
From: gbn474@leah.Albany.Edu (Gregory Newby)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: oscillating consciousness
Keywords: sorry...lost the header
Message-ID: <1133@leah.Albany.Edu>
Date: 20 Oct 88 15:40:55 GMT
Organization: The University at Albany, Computer Services Center
Lines: 40

In article <1119@leah.Albany.Edu> gbn474@leah.Albany.Edu (Gregory Newby) writes:
  (sorry, Shannon:  I lost your reference line)
>>Possible conclusion:  consciousness, like most things we can name
>>in nature, oscillates.
>>
>Other possible conclusion:  we unconsciously attach meaning to apparently
>randon patterns i.e. we hear the music, we see the lights, we notice that there 
>are some of the lights lit on the beat, and disregard the rest as noise.
>Hence, we have a pattern where none existed before.  Sounds like pattern-
>recognition to me. :-)
>>--newbs


>-=- Shannon Mann -=- smann@watdcsu.UWaterloo.ca

>P.S.  I'd like to know what 'oscillating consciousness' is supposed to mean.

Take it as you want.  We know that people can not attend to the entire
environment at once (or, at least that's what the cog. psychologists
have found).  Possibly, people are attuned more at some times than
others, in a regular pattern.  Personally, I would consider a sort of
continuous sine function before a binary on-off type of model.

An upcoming article, I believe in _Quality and Quantity_, considers
seriously the idea that ALL human phenomena are based on such
osciallations and the interference patterns they produce.  We're
talking from individual memory and thought to dyadic interaction
to group or mob behavior.  The article is by John Foldy, and is
an extension of his Dissertation.  I would be happy to mail the
reference to interested parties.

--newbs
   (
    gbnewby@rodan.acs.syr.edu
    gbn474@leah.albany.edu
    )

ps:  a book which I do NOT recommend, but makes similar considerations
in ways that make anyone knowledgable of natural science feel very
ill, is _Stalking the Wild Pendulum_ by Iztac Benton (sp?).