IUBio

Toward a Science of Consciousness 1998

Jim Hunter jim.hunter at REMOVE_TO_EMAIL.jhuapl.edu
Fri Apr 17 14:18:00 EST 1998


Hermital wrote:
 > 
 > On Thu 4/16/98 20:13 -0400 Jim Hunter wrote:
 > > cijadra at zedat.fu-berlin.de wrote:
 > >  >
 > >  > >           TOWARD A SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 1998
 > >  >
 > >  > Why make it a science?
 > >  > So some idiots eventually mess around connecting a square
kilmoeter
 > > of
 > >  > the right cells for that prupose with a ton of silicon chips?
 > >  >
 > >  > The conscious areas are sacred.
 > >  >
 > >  > Not something to be messed with.
 > >
 > > - There's actually nothing sacred about matter. If matter is
 > >   capable of becoming conscious, then people who are unfamiliar
 > >   with the properties of matter should stay away.
 > >
 > > - If matter can't become conscious, then we shouldn't
 > >   be talking.
 > >

 > The above statement is rather ambiguous.  If you are refering to the
 
The word "conscious" is also rather ambiguous. The whole subject 
is ambiguous. 

Let's make the assumption that minds 
cannot be conscious in dead bodies. 


> physical brain as the center of human phenomenological consciousness and
> the center of speech, that's fine.  But Descartes' Mind/Brain problem
> concerning consciousness and matter is a bit more murky because


Well, I consider Descartes' problem rather irrelevant
to the 20th century. Let's assume that we all have 
minds and brains and let Descartes rest in peace.

 
> consciousness, per se, has not been satisfactorily defined even all
> these centuries and millennia of human activity later.  One huge
> difficulty is that consciousness is still seen as a fortuitous
> subjective phenomenon by most researchers.  Perhaps that is the wrong


Yes, they would have to see it that way. 
One subjective conscious mind/body system 
per researcher is my motto.


> approach.  Perhaps consciousness is a continuum or spectrum of physical
> energy, just as electromagnetic radiation (EMR) is a continuum or
> spectrum of physical energy.  And perhaps it is some portion of the
> immanent, transcendent continuum of consciousness that becomes gross
> matter through the mechanisms we know as physics.  See further
> http://www.livingston.net/hermital/csenergy.htm.
> Indeed, human phenomenological consciousness may arise in the mundane
> scheme of things through the process outlined at
> http://www.livingston.net/hermital/patterns.htm (among others).
> --
> Alan
> Within the sub-light-speed spacetime continuum of our synergistic
> material universe, higher order information produced in the
> transcendent continuum of conscious energies devolves and directs
> both the organization and the evolution of lower order aggregations
> of energy called matter.
> Consciousness, Physics and the Holographic Paradigm:
> http://www.livingston.net/hermital/intro.htm

Then again, perhaps not.

---
Jim



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