On Thu, Jun 23, 2005 at 10:43:50AM +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 23, 2005 at 12:01:16PM +1000, Russell Standish wrote:
> > The alternative is that consciousness is a continuous property (or at
> > least finely divided miltivalued), argued by people like Susan
>
> ..and by all of critical care medicine.
>
>
> http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hs=aXM&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&biw=1172&q=critical+care+level+consciousness&btnG=Search
I did the Google search, but unfortunately I'm none the wiser as to
how critical care spcecialists uses the term. However, I woudl wager
that it is a 3rd person term, referring somehow to congitive ability,
not a first person term meaning being aware of oneself and the
surroundings.
At least Greenfield is supposedly talking about the latter. It doesn't
sound right to me.
>
> > Greenfield. This doesn't seem right to me. For one thing, this is not
> > how the term is used in everyday language - you are either conscious
> > or unconscious. I haven't seen one whisk of evidence that this naive
> > folk approach has got it wrong.
>
> You aren't serious, are you? Common sense completely fails most of science.
>
Sure. But until the folk meaning of the term is shown to be
inconsistent or meaningless, it is viable to use it. Science has
a (sometimes annoying) habit of borrowing everyday terms and changing
the meaning, which is quite likely in the case of critical care
medicine (or in anaesthetics for that matter).
Cheers
> --
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Received on Thu Jun 23 2005 - 19:34:53 PDT