IUBio

Collins's "Consciousness" concept comment on

Peter F. effectivespamblock at ozemail.com.au
Sat Jan 24 20:45:06 EST 2004


"k p Collins" <kpaulc@[----------]earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:e9oQb.21980

<snip>> "`blindly'-automated'" refers, solely, to the fact
> this or that occurs within Consciousness, but ,
> 'typically', 'outside' of aware-consciousness.

That is (as far as I am correct about this aspect of your thinking) a use of
the word "Consciousness" in a
wider sense than what 'even' I can think is the most *workable* possible.

You spread its meaning wide enough for it to be sweepingly defined as: the
legacy of evolved and hence in that sense adaptive energy-dynamics within
(mainly) brains or individual nervous systems.

I think it would be better to choose an expression such as "adaptive
information processing within an individual's nervous system or brain"
-- though of course preferably shorter than so.

It is (IMO) best to use the word Consciousness in a sense - understood in a
Tolerance Principled way with enough margin for uncertainty - of particular
(transiently predominating, peaking, or focused) patterns of neural firing
within a for adaptive functionality approximately modular (including mainly
cognition underpinning, to mainly visceromotor action underpinning) system
of "program structures" (IOW "actention modules", or components of
interlocking
actention modules); coupled with a recognition that any 'content' and
intensity of Consciousness to be
simply and conservatively seen as most essentially 'achieved' by the firing
of "energizing" nonspecific or RAT (reticular activating type) neurons.

I again am obliged to refer to Luria's "The Working Brain", chapter 2.


"Consciousness" would then *still* have a far wider meaning (a meaning
applicable to animals *almost* regardless of their evolved complexity) than
just something along the lines of "language assisted, cognitive-level,
self-awareness".

And, in my opinion, this would be a meaning that is not too wide, and not
too radically new.

P









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