To: K-list
Recieved: 1999/10/01 11:48
Subject: !Consciousness (was Re: [K-list] Nature
From: Ville Vainio
On 1999/10/01 11:48, Ville Vainio posted thus to the K-list:
On Thu, 30 Sep 1999, Martin Thompson wrote:
> This is exactly the problem: from outside, we can't tell. This shows
> that a critical piece of knowledge about the nature of consciousness is
> missing: how can we tell from the configuration of matter and energy
> whether something is conscious or not? At present, we can't tell whether
> something is conscious, or just claims to be.
What does it matter, if some thing is conscious and other is not?
Consciousness is just a word, and mostly based on erroneous reasoning. If
we take reality as the starting point, there is no such thing as
consciousness (as an opposite of not-consciousness, that is).
> A God would know, as Gods are supposed to know that sort of thing
> (everything).
I take that as a joke (as Gods do not "know".. people with neuronal
activity say they "know" stuff).
> Yes. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that consciousness arises in
> the brain, and is presumably generated there somehow. But, so far, no
> explanations that I've heard or read seem to solve the problem of how.
It's the ego that prevents you from seeing "how". It's quite simple,
really. It just can't be explained with words in any satisfactory way.
> Artificial intelligence answers generally bypass this question of
> experience - Dennett, for example ("Consciousness Explained"), just says
> that that is what it feels like to be a brain. Well, yes, but *how*? The
> interface from matter to experience may be simply a fundamental property
> of the Universe, as Dennett appears to imply, but that seems like an
I believe experience is not a fundamental property of universe in any way.
It's just stuff that happens. Matter doing the thing matter does.
> unsatisfactory explanation to me: "it just is." I don't get an "Aha!"
> experience from that.
Forget the consciousness and experience, and focus your attention on the
matter alone. See if you would get the "Aha!" matter-movement from that.
Hard-core materialism is the closest western approximation of the wisdom
of the east - too bad its advocates don't usually see the spiritual
dimension in it, and turn to nihilists.
> >How do you know *you* have any experiences the robot doesn't have? Is it
> >the ego working its magic?
> >
> All I know is that I have experiences. I can't tell whether the robot,
Of course you have experiences - the mistake you make is (IMHO) labeling
them "experiences", and giving them a special place in your database.
> To have solved the problem of consciousness, it must be necessary to
> be able to show unambiguously whether any given entity is conscious or
> not.
The straightforward solution: nothing is conscious. Consciousness doesn't
mean anything. If you can get an intuitive grasp of this idea, it's
extremely liberating and blissful. In the Samadhi experience one sees that
Everything is conscious, which is the same thing as Nothing is conscious
(ie. the attribute "conscious" is useless... kinda like saying everything
is everything).
Ville Vainio - vvainioATnospamtp.spt.fi http://www.tp.spt.fi/~vvainio
We're all puppets
The first step on the path to understanding is seeing the strings
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