X-Message-Number: 14760
From: "John Clark" <>
Subject: Clark's questions 
Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2000 02:53:46 -0400

In  #14745   Wrote:

   >It offers, as I have explained, a possible new notion of how subjective
   >experiences arise.

You propose a black box, you call it a self circuit, and say feeling comes
from there. I don't see how this idea makes us any wiser.

     >>Me:

     >>Explain why a standing wave creates subjectivity. Maybe I'm a little 
     thick
     >>but it's not obvious what one has to do with the other.

  >The physical basis of feeling has to be something which is not just a symbol
  >or a representation of something else; it has to be the thing-in-itself

Premise: Consciousness must be causes by some thing.
Conclusion: Consciousness is caused by standing waves.
If standing waves were the only thing that existed then your reasoning
would be valid but as it is I think you need a few steps in-between.

   >Experiment will decide whether my idea is correct, if we find the standing
   >waves (or something similar) and correlate them with reported feelings.

We already know of certain chemicals that correlate with reported feelings,
sulfuric acid and pain for example, but that fact doesn't immediately cause
a theory of consciousness to spring to mind.

      >>Me:
      >> a standing wave of what?

   >electrical or/and magnetic or/and chemical waves.

I don't see how it could be electric or magnetic, a brain subjected to even
very intense fields has little effect on its operation.

   >Study of consciousness is not restricted to (a) external observation of
   >gross behavior or (b) introspection. Studies of internal brain functions,
   >and their correlation with reported subjective states, is proceeding apace.

You said the word yourself, REPORTED! Reported means you're observing
the sounds somebody else made with their mouth, their actual subjective
experience is entirely a matter of speculation.


   >The radio receiver converts radio signals back into sound. The radio doesn't
      >know or care whether the sound is Beethoven's music or somebody's fart.

Exactly, it can do lots of things and that's why it would be foolish to call it
a Beethoven circuit.

   >The self circuit, on the other hand (and it must exist, whether a standing
   >wave or something else)

Is there a speed circuit in a racing car or a beauty circuit in a work
of art?

   >besides interacting with other aspects of the brain, CONSTITUTES feeling.

If it interact with other aspects of the brain then the Turing Test works.
If it doesn't then evolution would not have made it.

   >Elegant solutions are not necessarily the first developed, either by
   >nature or by people.

Evolution found a way to make the parts of the brain that deal with
feeling hundreds of millions of years ago, it's the parts that deal
with calculation that are new, only about one million. Also you seem to
be saying that approximate solutions are harder to obtain than exact ones
and that doesn't seem right.

  John K Clark      

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