From: Jef Allbright (jef@jefallbright.net)
Date: Fri Feb 07 2003 - 23:00:00 MST
brent.allsop@attbi.com wrote:
> "Jef Allbright" <jef@jefallbright.net> wrote:
>
> "The sense of self is an illusion."
>
> Assertions like this are missing a big part of the picture - the most
> important part of the picture!
>
> If this "sense of self" is an "illusion" - what then is this
> "illusion" made of?
I've read through your essay on qualia but I'm going to have to read it
again and think about it some more to understand how it fits. To me, the
idea of qualia implies a recursively nested "Cartesian theater" scenario,
requiring at each level a homunculus to observe the play.
If take a look at the behavior of a complex system with multiple feedback
loops, you might feel that it is amazingly responsive to it's environment,
but you won't necessarily find any one-to-one mapping or representation of
the outside world within the system begin examined. You could try to build
it that way, but it wouldn't be efficient, and at the lowest level the
mapping wouldn't hold true.
I tend to like Buckminster Fuller's simple analogy, that our consciousness
is like a slipknot moving along a piece of string and it doesn't matter what
it's made of.
>
> An "illusion" is some real conscious knowledge that inaccurately
> represents its referent. For example, our knowledge of a pencil in a
> glass of water is not straight when the real pencil in the real glass
> of water is actually straight. We call this an illusion because our
> conscious knowledge doesn't accurately represent its referent. But
> just saying it is an "illusion" doesn't mean our conscious knowledge
> doesn't exist! We know, more than we know anything else, that this
> conscious knowledge of the pencil exists regardless of the fact that
> it is an illusion and not straight.
I think you are saying that when we observe something, even if we are seeing
an illusion, the fact remains that we are observing something and forming a
mental model based on our perceptions, and that we are conscious that we are
experiencing this mental model. I would not deny that.
I think you misunderstood my statement that our sense of self is an
illusion. I'm not saying our sense of self doesn't exist. I am saying that
it's not what we think it is. We conventionally think our "self" is
continuous, basically rational, and that it generally follows along with a
kind of serial narrative that we observe. I'm saying that these
observations are often false, illusory, changing with time (even to the
extent of cause and effect reversed) and secondary to the primary processes
that are occuring in the brain.
IF you accept that our sense of self is far from what it really is, then we
get to my main point, which is the following: How and why do we value so
strongly this sense of self, that we are learning is not at all what it
seems? I suggest that we value it almost solely for evolutionary-based
reasons, and that moving beyond this limited view may provide a richer range
and sense of consciousness, a more rational approach to living and achieving
goals, but a diminished sense of individual self. (No, I'm not promoting
communism. <g>)
>
----------snip----------
>
> And the web is already self aware! Google stores lots of information
> about the web.
There's a lot of storage, and a sunstantial amount of processing being done,
but not even close to the type of organization and behavior that I would
call self-aware. I see virtually zero evidence of introspection and
self-modification in the dynamics of the Web. What do you see that
indicates to you that the Web is self-aware?
Its just that this mathematical knowledge isn't
> phenomenally conscious knowledge of the web like that which exists in
> our brains.
>
> Brent Allsop
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