From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Tue Jul 01 2003 - 18:04:50 MDT
> Emlyn wrote:
> >
> > How about this: "I" is that piece of me, as an entity, that
> > experiences. I exclude all information processing components from
> > this, although they are undoubtedly required to be present. I feel
> > like there is something left over that can be termed "I" (and which
> > is somehow pivotal), but I also know that that can't be the case.
> >
Rafal replied:
> ### What if you keep removing your brain piece by piece - first the
> occipital cortex (losing the ability to imagine shape and color), then
> parietal cortex (losing the sense of space and location in
> space), then
> prefrontal and parietal language cortex (losing the stream of
> consciousness), then temporal cortex (losing images of sound), then
> olfactory cortex (losing the imagination of smell), then the
> insula (losing
> a sense of your body), then..., well, would there be anything
> left? Even if
> you still have your motor cortex, your prefrontal executive areas, the
> hippocampi and basal ganglia, even the moral reasoning cortex
> in the frontal
> pole, would there be anything subjectively existent?
No idea. But it is crucial to my argument above that I agree that all
functions of intelligence seem to be fulfilled (or fulfillable at least) by
non-concious mundane algorithms, implemented in wetware or other physical
substrates. This is my quandry.
>
> I rather think that "I" is a side effect of certain
> information flows, maybe
> even atemporal states of mathematical entities.
I think Egan postulated something like this in Permutation City... we are
arrangements of information, and the permutations on the way you interpret
physical entities to be arranged are infinite, therefore everything
internally consistent exists somewhere as a complex mapping from some piece
of reality to the target pattern (although I think the mapping would often
require more information than the target pattern embodies).
But if you believe this, then identity really disappears in a puff of logic.
Why would we even bother with this reality if we always exist in the greater
platonic pattern space?
> Our
> particular flavor of
> I-ness depends on the particulars of our brains, but as long
> as there is
> information processing of some level of complexity, there is
> a subjective
> experience.
How does it tie together? Consciousness doesn't arise from data, it is
postulated that it arise from iterative process. But processing is so
arbitrary; you can just about map any process to any other with a complex
enough mapping procedure. Where does the concrete individual come from?
> As Jeff wrote, something exists, and this is all
> I can be sure
> of, assuming that nobody asks exactly what is something as opposed to
> everything or nothing, and what it means to exist, or not to exist.
>
> Rafal
I'm still stuck on "I exist" => "Something exists" => "I don't exist" =>
"Nothing exists". Ack.
Emlyn
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