On Apr 26, 12:47 pm, Brent Meeker <meeke....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> No, I think you're missing my point. Consider your analogy of fitting
> together images to make a complete picture. You present this as a
> spatial representation of the sequential flow of consciousness. Now
> suppose your spatial elements have zero extent - they are "spatial
> instants", i.e. points. What fits them together?
>
>
> It appears to me that you are implicitly supposing that information in
> the brain (say in it's structure) can be associated with an instant of
> consciousness and hence allow it's position in the "complete picture" to
> be determined. But it would not be a legitimate move to use information
> that was not in the instant itself. And that's what I find implausible,
> that there is significant information content in a conscious interval of
> infinitesimal duration.
So, we have two things represented by a puzzle piece.
1) The contents of an instant of consciousness...which is the "image
fragment" on the surface of the piece.
2) How that instant of consciousness relates to the instants that
preceeded it and follow it...which is the piece's position within the
larger picture
And you have two seperate questions about information and conscious
states.
A) What information is responsible for a conscious state
B) What information is IN a conscious state.
And I think your questions focus on 02 and B.
So, as for 2...there is no actual relationship between the instants.
They fit together based solely on the first person subjective feeling
of flow, which undoubtedly involves some sort of short term memory.
Part of the feeling of an instant is how it is related to the previous
instant.
As for B, I'm not sure this matters, as it's really a seperate
question from A. So I am saying consciousness is information, but I'm
not saying it's the information that describes the particular things
that you're conscious OF at any given instant.
If I write down the details of what I'm conscious of AT this moment,
that information isn't the information that caused my conscious
experience OF that moment.
Conscious experience is tied to A. Not B.
B has no special significance. I'm not sure what it even really means
to talk about the information in a conscious state. How much
information is in the feeling of anger? How many bits describe the
subjective experience of seeing red?
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Received on Sun Apr 26 2009 - 21:40:13 PDT