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Only for certain definitions of "consciousness". What's yours?
by 3np 4y ago
Only for certain definitions of "consciousness". What's yours?
- tsimionescu 4y agoAny definition of consciousness in which a human is conscious while a rock isn't conscious will do for my statement above. And if your definition of consciousness makes rocks or electrons conscious, I don't think you're really capturing what most humans mean by the concept. Note: animism or something like the Hindu concept of Brahman still imply the same kind of consciousness that I'm talking about. The soul (for animism) or Brahman itself are the conscious things, they just happen to live in/encompass rocks or electrons.
- 3np 4y agoWhat if we realize consciousness is non-binary? http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Integrated_information_theory http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Integrated_information_t... Though, the loss of magic is most likely more correlated with approaching this mostly rationally and analytically, than our scientific progress as a species. You seem to be confusing your personal semantics with fundamental truth (we're all slaves to this tendency, I think). If you're looking for magic you need to look inward, not outward. And see if you can make that voice of reasoning be quiet for some extended time.
- tsimionescu 4y agoIIT is exactly what I was thinking of as a bad definition of consciousness. Any theory that assigns a non 0 amount of "consciousness" to a rock is defining a completely different concept than what people mean when they say consciousness. Also, IIT has no basis at all. They've just found some measure that satisfies the property "human brains have more of it than insect brains, and insect brains have more of it than rocks do". Nothing else makes the II measurement in IIT related to consciousness, as far as I've ever found.