Dear Chris,
I happen to be a believer in the observer-moment as fundamental, and the
only thing one can be sure of from the first person perspective. "I think,
therefore I am" is taking it too far in deducing the existence of an
observer; "I think, therefore there is a thought" is all that I can be
absolutely certain of. Having said that, however, I don't actually believe
that my thoughts are all independent of each other. The simplest and most
likely explanation is that my thoughts are generated by my brain in the
usual manner. The point is that this is not *logically* necessary, and if we
are talking about consciousness persisting over billions or trillions of
years, the "usual manner" won't be the most practical.
Your second point is something I have often thought about. I am pretty sure
that dogs experience observer-moments, but I am not sure that worms do; if
they do, then maybe our present day computers are not far off from being
conscious, unless there is some non-computational aspect of biological
nervous systems that has so far remained obscure. I would class viruses as
being on a par with inanimate objects as far as conscious experience is
concerned, but who knows, maybe inanimate objects have a rich but utterly
alien subjective life from which we are as completely excluded as if we were
in separate universes.
--Stathis Papaioannou
>Dear Stathis,
> This was an interesting post. You're right in that, until quite
>recently, we've understood the world only as well as we've needed to, in
>order to survive. But if you believe, as some people on this list do, that
>instantaneous 'observer moments' are the only fundamentally real objects in
>the universe, (and that the reasoning, 'I think therefore I am' runs
>primarily in that direction) then it is the logical struture of our
>thopughts that is at each moment retrospectively generating a history in
>which there evolved a creature intelligient enough to think them. From this
>perspective, there is then a difference when someone becomes too mentally
>disfunctional to survive by themselves; then their incoherent patterns of
>thought will have to go one better and retrospectively generate a history
>in
>which a successful species evolved, of which they are a defective variant
>(we might all belong in this category, and keep each other sane..)
> But really, here we have to be more specific about what constitutes an
>observer moment, and what does not. Do dogs, worms, viruses have observer
>moments, or did they just coevolve in the history we might claim to have
>created by thinking and being? I would suggest that they are as real as we
>are, and that human consciousness is only distinguished from the animal
>sort
>in matters of quantity and capacity, and believe that the sorts of thoughts
>thatcan be taken as the fundamental objects of the universe are those that
>appear in the context of an organism successful response to its surrounding
>environment. This could be seen as a compromise between taking thoughts as
>fundamental, and a more old-fashioned 'physicalist' perspective, but I
>would
>see it more as observer moments being associated with the observer and
>his/her/its environment. After all, the distinction between these is pretty
>vague: Does the apple I just ate count as me or my environment? What if I
>made myself sick? What if I cut off my appendage? Don't worry; I will do
>neither of these things.
> Yours Sincerely,
>Chris Collins.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <stathispapaioannou.domain.name.hidden>
>To: <aet.radal.ssg.domain.name.hidden>; <everything-list.domain.name.hidden.com>
>Sent: Monday, May 09, 2005 2:02 PM
>Subject: Re: Many worlds theory of immortality
>
>
> > Dear aet.radal ssg,
> >
> > I think you missed my point about the amnesic and psychotic patients,
>which
> > is not that they are clear thinkers, but that they are conscious despite
>a
> > disability which impairs their perception of time. Your post raises an
> > interesting question in that you seem to assume that normally
>functioning
> > human minds have a correct model of reality, as opposed to the "broken"
> > minds of the mentally ill. This is really very far from the truth. Human
> > brains evolved in a specific environment, often identified as the
>African
> > savannah, so the model of the world constructed by the human mind need
>only
> > match "reality" to the extent that this promoted survival in that
> > environment. As a result, we humans are only able to directly perceive
>and
> > grasp a tiny, tiny slice of physical reality. Furthermore, although we
>are
> > proud of our thinking abilities, the theories about physical reality
>that
> > humans have come up with over the centuries have in general been
> > ridiculously bad. I have spent the last ten years treating patients with
> > schizophrenia, and I can assure you that however bizarre the delusional
> > beliefs these people come up with, there are multiple historical
>examples
>of
> > apparently "sane" people holding even more bizarre beliefs, and often
> > insisting on pain of death or torture that everyone else agree with
>them.
> >
> > You might point out that despite the above, science has made great
>progress.
> > This is true, but it has taken the cumulative efforts of millions of
>people
> > over thousands of years to get to our current level of knowledge, which
>in
> > any case is still very far from complete in any field. Scientific
>progress
> > of our species as a whole is mirrored in the efforts of a psychotic
>patient
> > who gradually develops insight into his illness, recognising that there
>is
>a
> > difference between real voices and auditory hallucinations, and learning
>to
> > reason through delusional beliefs despite the visceral conviction that
>"they
> > really are out to get me".
> >
> > --Stathis Papaioannou
> >
> > >From: "aet.radal ssg" <aet.radal.ssg.domain.name.hidden>
> > >To: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
> > >Subject: Re: Many worlds theory of immortality
> > >Date: Sat, 07 May 2005 10:44:25 -0500
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Received on Mon May 09 2005 - 20:57:36 PDT