Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!whuts!homxb!genesis!hotlr!dave
From: dave@hotlr.ATT ( C D Druitt hotlk)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Thought/Emotion/Feeling
Message-ID: <506@hotlr.ATT>
Date: 11 Jan 89 19:46:29 GMT
References: <569@epicb.UUCP> <1146@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <1152@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <496@uceng.UC.EDU> <1154@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <1867@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <440@aipna.ed.ac.uk> <1994@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU>
Reply-To: dave@hotlr.UUCP (54246 - C D Druitt hotlk)
Organization: AT&T-BL Holmdel NJ - Lab 5431
Lines: 40

In article <1994@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks) writes:
 > In article <440@aipna.ed.ac.uk> jeff@uk.ac.ed.aipna.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
 > >In article <1867@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks) writes:
 > >>Now I know where that idea about language and consciousness
 > Well, I admit I haven't talked to the new age people or the Scientologists.
 > Who would you consider authorities on this subject?
 > >Disagreements on this subject are often due to different ideas about
 > >what "consciousness" means.  Many people think animals are conscious, which
 > I agree he says some interesting things.  I just didn't think his
 > evidence supports such a radical thesis.  The "internal voice" aspect
 > of our consciousness is certainly one of the most easily noticed aspects
 > of it.  One could, of course, define consciousness as that verbal
 > aspect of it.  I would be hard put to consider deaf-mutes nonconscious,
 > or even Helen Keller before she learned to communicate.  I would bet
 > that many of the great apes are conscious.  They seem to display behavior
 > indicating they are.

One of the interesting things that happened in the early 60's was
controlled scientific research on LSD (standard disclaimer) in which
subjects trained to observe and write their experiences were placed
in completely white, bare rooms and given varying strong doses of
LSD. There were enough similarities of experience to infer (rightly or
wrongly) some common denominators and some stages. Without going
into less-relevant details, one of the common denominators was
the sensing of a "Watcher", analagous to a father figure, which
seemed to observe all processes and input with a sense of care and concern.
It seems difficult to draw conclusions based on the experiment
indicating whther the "Watcher" was a "homunculus" type, whether it
was real or imagined, whether it was one individual, a representative of
a group, or a subset of another level of group, or what it's function was.
It was, however, an interesting discovery in terms of the current
trends in thinking that a group of simple-task oriented modules,
working together with similar groups, can create a whole greater
than the sum of the parts. What is the "consciousness" involved in
individual vs. crowd psychology in, say, humans, or ants, or
binary bit manipulations, or robots?

Dave Druitt
(the NODES)
(201) 949-5898 (w)