From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Thu Mar 10 2005 - 00:08:31 MST
I agree that global accessibility and reflectivity are actually fuzzy rather
than crisp qualities...
-- Ben
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-sl4@sl4.org [mailto:owner-sl4@sl4.org]On Behalf Of Tennessee
Leeuwenburg
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2005 12:22 AM
To: sl4@sl4.org
Subject: Re: Cognitive neuroscience of consciousness
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This is not an un-controversial definition.
For example, some people propose the conscious mind only to be "what
you are thinking about at the moment". Additionally, many things
present in your "subconscious" can through introspection eventually be
brought into the conscious mind. I'm not just referring to paying
attention to something, but rather through analysis of your own
behaviour you can learn about things which are effecting you but which
you were not previously aware of, you can recover suppressed memory,
etc. So talking about things which are "not globally accessible and
not able to be subjected to reflective thought" is always and
inaccurate definition.
There are some things which we can concentrate on, some things which
we can think of but require unusual concentration, some things which
require learning, some things which we choose to leave as a
subconscious process, some things which can be either consciously or
subconsciously performed, and probably some things which can never be
made conscious.
That's not to attack his paper, but to point out that you can't walk
in to this area expecting to be able to always draw a clear distinction.
Cheers,
- -Tennessee
| Well, "unconscious" is not really a well-defined term, since
| "conscious" isn't, which was one of the points in my post.
|
| In his paper, Block decomposed the term "conscious" in a useful
| way, and that implies a parallel decomposition of the term
| "unconscious."
|
| So, "unconscious" according to your understanding, in Block's
| language, would be reformulated as "in the mind/brain but not
| globally accessible and not able to be subjected to reflective
| thought." Whether things in this category have *phenomenality* is
| then treated as a separate issue...
|
| -- Ben G
|
|
|
|
|> -----Original Message----- From: owner-sl4@sl4.org
|> [mailto:owner-sl4@sl4.org]On Behalf Of brannen Sent: Wednesday,
|> March 09, 2005 12:00 PM To: sl4@sl4.org Subject: Re: Cognitive
|> neuroscience of consciousness
|>
|>
|> Before commenting I need to ensure I've grasped a definition
|> correctly.
|>
|> I understand "unconsciousness" to the "Stimuli that are too weak
|> to enter consciousness [but] nevertheless influence behavior ..."
|>
|>
|> Correct?
|>
|> Andy
|>
|> Ben Goertzel wrote:
|>
|>> I've just read a quite interesting paper by Ned Block on the
|>> cognitive neuroscience of consciousness; some brief comments on
|>> the paper
|>
|> may be found
|>
|>> at this link
|>>
|>> http://www.goertzel.org/blog/blog.htm
|>>
|>> -- Ben G
|>>
|>>
|>>
|>>
|>>
|>>
|>
|>
|>
|
|
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