X-Message-Number: 16887 From: Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 12:52:48 EDT Subject: Re:The Cure may be Worse than the Disease + conciousness << On the other hand, perhaps the cure IS worse than the disease. Hmm. Now, I am frankly a little worried who or what the Almighty is going to send next. Lee Corbin >> May be I could try to be up to the job? :-) Here are my ideas about conciousness, this subject is often badly defined so it seems that the concious property is something mysterious, something given by GOd or something similar. I think conciousness is a simple mind property. Let me start at the basis. Plants have no neural system, it would be too costly for them in energy therm. Animals have them, because they can pay for it and need it because they move. Moving turns the world into an hazardous place, and you need some sensory systems to "see" where you go. Sensing the environment is only the first step, the next one is to predict it. To do that, you must not only process informations from the sensory system, you must too know how the world evolve in time. From that "science" and the sensory input, you can predict what will happen. If you see a tree falling, you may predict where it end its fall and move so that you are not here at the critical time. The third, neural function is to model the behavior of creature similar to you. They are in the environment and how they react is useful for you . The best way to know how they react, is to see how you react, so you must have a kind of split personality: part 1 watch how part 2 behave. Part 2 is a simulation of a nearby person. For example, my 5 black cats prefered food is chiken. when they see me, they model me as a very large cat, a super cat. A supercat must eat supercat food, and that must be chiken. So they ask forcefully for everything is on the table. Most of the time they are very and badly surprized by what is here. The last step is when part 2 don't simulate any exterior system. It is a copy of part 1, this is a system looking at itself, this is conciousness. You need only two clock systems to have part 1 and part 2. A computer could have a conciousness with that definition, it could even have a beter one that us. Any social animal must be concious with that definition. Yvan Bozzonetti. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16887