[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.

[gts]

On Sun, 27 Nov 2005 10:54:23 -0500, John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote:

> And how can people tell if their mates (or anybody else for that matter)
> are conscious or unconscious?

I'm thinking that what we call "consciousness" is nothing more than the  
ability to ponder one's awareness, and that this is just a matter of some  
extra circuitry.  Higher organisms have it, lower organisms don't, but all  
organisms are aware. We can infer its existence in others when they report  
about their experience.

Perhaps Rafal can help here. Rafal, I am assuming that a part of the brain  
stores memories of sense experience and that another part retrieves those  
memories. A brain lacking the second part would be analogous to an  
unconscious camera: aware but not self-aware.


-gts