- #141
M. Gaspar
- 679
- 1
Originally posted by Canute
I don't think it's implausible, I think it's incorrect. I would define conscious as 'what it is like to be', the most common definition.
"What it is like to be..." ...a frog, a man, an electron?
I'm less clear on how to define 'information'.
Here's how I would define information within the context of what I have proposed: Input -- of whatever quality -- from a source other than self that causes a change -- however minute -- in the self.
I would say so. For them (string theorists) everything is epiphenomenal on strings.
What might "epiphenomenal" mean? Per the American Heritage Dictionary -- henceforth AHD -- it means "besides". Besides what?
Not quite nothing at all though.
Since I did not stop to take inventory of my entire internal world to see if ANYTHING was "axiomatic", I left room for the possibility that something might be.
If you say so.Whatever it reduces to, how would I know. For most microphenomenalists this is not an issue, since they take consciousness to be irreducible and reduce everything to it instead.
Did you think I was criticising 'microphenominalism'? I think there's a lot of truth in it.
It did sound a bit pejorative but I'm over it now. In any case, in the greater scheme of things, an entire lifetime is a "microphenomenon" ...perhaps an "engram" in the mind of the Universe (should the Universe HAVE a mind). Meanwhile, our cells are "having experiences" and "communicating with" one another (via chemicals and electricity) and may thus be "conscious" of whatever they can sense and respond to. Likewise, particles, stars and galaxies.
You see, Canute, I am more than a microphenomenonalist; I'm a full-on panpsychist who is proposing that the detection of information -- simple or complex -- that alters in any way the behavior of the detecting "entity" -- simple or complex -- is perhaps all the "reducing" we need to be doing with regard to "consciousness"
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