Re: Does violating the laws of physics require intelligence?

On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 23:54:24 -0800, Treus wrote:

Timberwoof wrote:
In article
<b198f02a-3bb0-4382-9f56-e3d584923aff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Treus <treusdrie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Let's consider consciousness to start with. The subjective dimension
of awareness that perceives the object as distinct from itself.
Describe how that is accounted for in terms of properties the
physical brain.

I'm meditating on the key phrase in your response here:

The subjective dimension of awareness that perceives the object as
distinct from itself.

So awareness has at least one dimension, a subjective one. This
dimension perceives some object and perceives that it is distinct from
the dimension. That word salad sounds impenetrably philosophical, but
it reflects what some philosophers have shown is a beginner's view of
existence: that there is some arbitrary boundary between self and
non-self.

In other discussions on this newsgroup, teaching science is said to
require a through knowledge of the subject matter. It's really
disappointing that in the study of mind you are so ignorant of
important previous work to answer exactly this question: how does
consciousness arise in the brain?

There are sensory organs and processing centers in the brain. (In the
case of the eyes, the brain has actually extended itself into the eyes
so it can start the processing as early as possible.) Along with
long-term memory to provide a framework in which to interpret
sensations and short-term memory to tie everything together, these
processes combine to create the illusion of consciouness.

There have been plenty of instances of people injured in certain
unfortunate ways, each with damage to some specific part of their
brains, with very specific results depending on which part of the brain
was hurt.

Consciousnees is an illusion created by all the parts of the brain
working at the same time, receiving, processing, weighing and storing
information, making decisions and doing things.

Okay, that is what you believe, Do you have an empirical basis for that
belief? If so, what is it (with citations, of course)?


If you want to dive straight into the literature, try:

Ramachandran, V. S. and Hirstein, William. "The perception of phantom
limbs." [Invited review, the D. O. Hebb lecture] Brain, 1998,
121:1603-1630.

This was cited in:

Neil Levy's _Neuroethics: Challenges for the 21st Century_


For a med-school level textbook, try:

Eric Kandel's _Principles of Neural Science_

For something a bit easier, try:

Daniel Dennett's _Consciousness Explained_

Both of these have extensive bibliographies.



There's nothing in there that requires some mysterious nonphysical
hocus-pocus to make it work.

.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: Does violating the laws of physics require intelligence?
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  • Re: Does violating the laws of physics require intelligence?
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