IUBio

Toward a Science of Consciousness 1998

Jason Rosenberg jason at erdas.com
Sun Apr 19 20:15:04 EST 1998


cijadra at zedat.fu-berlin.de wrote:
> 
> Jason Rosenberg <jason at erdas.com> wrote:
> 
> >I must say, this looks like a great conference.  I
> >wish I had known about it sooner.  Will there be a
> >published proceedings for the various papers?  What
> >about proceedings for the past years?
> 
> Easy, look at the title: consciousNESS.
> 

Pardon?  I don't think I understand your point.  Perhaps
if there is a language problem on your end, you ought
to run your posts by one who understands English a
little better, if indeed your goal is to communicate
your point back to me, the poster.

> Reading the topics might also bring enlightenment to the why, as the
> aspect of enlightenment and all of the branches to do with it are not
> exactly there in abundance... apart from many others.
> 

"Enlightenment to the why".  Not sure what you mean there, are you
thinking in one language and transcribing to another?  Can you
define "enlightenment" a little better.  Are you talking about religious
elightenment (in which case I'm completely disinterested), or are you
talking about some sort of Zen-Buddhist-at-one-with-the-earth enlightenment
(in which case, I might at least listen to you a little longer).  In
general, the term "enlightenment" is rather boring to me.

> And if thou wouldst consider the matter a bit deeper,
> though mightst observe that the old "we are in the frontal cortex and
> it is bigger than that of most other mammals, therefore we can lock
> them into cages and abuse them" is not exactly congruent with the data
> of the alive-mammal-apart-cutters.

Boring again.  It would be ridiculous to ignore the wealth of evidence
available in the mammalian world.  Again, I'm only guessing at your
meaning, picking up various queues here and there from your broken
sentences.

> 
> Here is a little riddle for you:
> 
> How would society restructure if it was proven beyond doubt that the
> thinking and conscious centers we have are also there in mammals and
> some of them also in many other animals?

I have no doubt that mammals have abundant consciousness, and I don't
think this is generally doubted, at least not by those who are
"enlightened."  You may just be an innocent victim of a flawed
educational environment in which you feel it necessary to be crassly
arrogant and rebelious, and thusly making a bit of a fool out of
yourself.  The world at large does not disagree with you about
animals.

> To what extent would it make what people do to animals a crime the
> same way or to at least the same percentage the similarity is there
> as if they had been committed against the mammal "human"?
> 

There is no universal morality.  We simply live in a world where we
humans have agreed to treat the killing of humans a crime and the
killing of animals not a crime.  No big deal.  No mystery there.

> The moment you declare certain centers main suspicion areas for
> conscious centers or declare them THE conscious areas, it might cause
> some tiny, trivial alterations in a few unimportant areas...

As far as I'm concerned, the entire nervous system is required for
any experiments regarding human consciousness.  To try and take a small
piece of the brain and try to analyze it in isolation would be taking
things out of context.  You might learn something interesting and
fascinating to be sure, but you must take into account the full 
extent of the beast, with utmost importance on the perceptual
and motor system, for without these, no consciousness can be said
to exist in any real world.





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