IUBio

Robot Dreams

George Bajszar gyuri at usa.net
Thu Sep 14 03:20:37 EST 2000


In article <39BFF09B.1FAC at vic.ozland.net.au>,
  jgcasey at vic.ozland.net.au wrote:
> I find your use of the word 'conscious' to be vague.
>
> "some level of consciousness"
> "conscious mind"
> "consciousness decides"
> "conscious brain"
>

I agree, I placed a central significance to a conscious attention and
it appears that I was indeed incorrect in my assumption.

> Often when you 'sleep on' a problem or 'think about
> something else' the answer will come to you.

I see what you mean. Perhaps what is happening is that neurons generate
random noise with their signals in the background of our attention, and
often the random combination of messages spark the seeked correct
answer.

Our attention is only focused on the contents and processing of data
residing in the short term memory, but subconscious background noise of
random neuron activity can spark accidental correct combinations which
the neurons representing the question that needs a solution can pick
up, realize, and send the final result to our attention with a bang.
The whole processing occurred completely subconsciously. It makes sense
that most neuron activity is in the background and our attention will
not notice most of those activities.

Sunconsciouss control of inputs and outputs represent motorized
(instinct) background processes, that do not require intelligence to
take over. Rather they are pretrained motorized sequence of repetative
actions or reactions.

Logic combinatory processes such as if/else could have motorized
themselves as well, so the same processes that we think of loudly in
our minds could take place subconsciously. Perhaps the difference is
that I can see is that the main focus of attention usually deals with
specific details, while subconscious decisions can only be made using
generic or symbolic information applied. Perhaps the subconsciouss
results are sent to the central attention for conscious verification.
And perhaps nothing I said here made any correlation with what is
occurring in reality.

> So I don't
> think consciousness is required for filtering out what
> is important information. A computer program can filter
> data according to some criteria about what is important
> and I don't think it is conscious at the time. Perhaps
> you need to be conscious to set up the criteria itself.
>
> -- John.
>

How true, how ture!

George Bajszar


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