RE: Sam Harris On Defining Consciousness
August 24, 2015 at 5:48 pm
(This post was last modified: August 24, 2015 at 5:59 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Self awareness and consciousness are not interchangeable. An organism can be conscious, but not -self- aware. Though all organisms which are self aware are, by default, conscious. Of course, thats ignoring the elphant you just snuck in the door.....are you -not- autonomous.....? Either way you would go...what would that have to do with awareness or self awareness? Is there something about being autonomous that prevents awareness, or even self awareness? What might that be? Autonomy is an issue of determination, not awareness.
I'm willing to call an earthworm less complex, or even less conscious than your computer (at least for the purpose of this discussion). It's still, however, conscious....so what does that make your computer? That, imo, is why theres a push to define (or more appropriately, redefine) consciousness, we've reached a boundary condition we're uncomfortable with. Whereby we consider one thing to be conscious, and another not so...despite it satisfying the same conditions - or an even greater set of conditions, as the example of your comps cpu and an earth worm shows us.
I'm willing to call an earthworm less complex, or even less conscious than your computer (at least for the purpose of this discussion). It's still, however, conscious....so what does that make your computer? That, imo, is why theres a push to define (or more appropriately, redefine) consciousness, we've reached a boundary condition we're uncomfortable with. Whereby we consider one thing to be conscious, and another not so...despite it satisfying the same conditions - or an even greater set of conditions, as the example of your comps cpu and an earth worm shows us.
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