RE: What do you lose if you simply accept...

From: Lee Corbin <lcorbin.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 20:57:34 -0700

Stathis wrote

> [Here is] a neat way to define what is special about first
> person experience: it is the gap in information between what can be known
> from a description of an object and what can be known from being the object
> itself. This is a personal thing, but I think it is at least a little
> surprising that there should be such a gap, and would never have guessed had
> I not been conscious myself.

"Had you not been conscious" yourself? Do you think that this
is at all possible?

That sufficiently complex entities capable of making their way
in the world ought to be conscious seems very natural to me,
for some reason. When I examine the animal world, for instance,
and see small creatures chasing one another, I would expect
them to be making maps of their environment; I would expect
them to have feelings; and I would expect at some level of
development that their maps would include a bit of self-reference.
(Just a tad, for the *lower* life forms.)

Perhaps I am hard-wired to project my own thoughts and feelings
onto others, including animals. Solipsism *really* seems unscientific
somehow. I myself have likes and dislikes, and so why shouldn't everyone
and everything else?

> I don't think it is a good idea to simply ignore this gap,

Well, I'd agree to call it a *difference*: as I said in another
post, the way some of us see it is that there isn't an information
gap.

> but on the other hand, I don't think there is any need to postulate
> mind/body dualism and try to explain how the two interact.

Well, I think that everyone here agrees with that. But of course,
you are thinking about the resurgence of dualism. I probably agree
with you.

> Aside from this one difference I have focused on, first person
> experience is just something that occurs in the normal course of
> events in the physical universe.

Well said. I would like to quote that. I do also read that to
include consciousness, as I'm sure you meant. I would also
read it to include all the "gaps".

Lee
Received on Wed May 18 2005 - 00:00:31 PDT