[ExI] Let's play What If.

[x at extropica.org]

2010/11/11 John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net>:
> The only consciousness we can directly observe is our
> own...

John, I like your hard-edged no-nonsense approach to much of the
content of this discussion, but your assertion that I quoted above
highlights the incoherence at the very core demonstrated by you,
Descartes, and many others. Such a singularity of self, with its
infinite regress, can't be modeled as a physical system.  Nor is it
needed.

See Dennett for a cogent philosophical explanation, or Ismael &
Pollock's nolipsism for a logical-semantic view, or Metzinger's Being
No One for a very detailed exposition of the experimental evidence, or
Hofstadter's Strange Loop for a sincere but more muddled account, or
even Alan Watts' The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are for a more
intuitionist approach.

Digest and integrate this thinking, and then we might be able to move
this conversation forward with extension from a more coherent basis.

- Jef