Is dualism the key to understanding human culture and consciousness?

[Moridin]

Or are you saying that information is when one pattern ( the pattern of our neurons firing) is superimposed on another pattern )? If so, then there is no difference between a current computer and a conscious understanding. Are you saying that computers are conscious or that people are not conscious?

Maybe if you think of cognition as gradual, rather than an all-or-nothing property, these sorts of reasoning might become clearer.

 

[wittgenstein]

"Maybe if you think of cognition as gradual, rather than an all-or-nothing property, these sorts of reasoning might become clearer."
Moriden
My posts in this thread deal only with JoeDawg's contention that information is a pattern and only a pattern. Perhaps a good analogy is that if one sees understanding as a pattern in our brain superimposed on outside reality, then the pattern in one's brain can be thought of as a grid. Grids must be taken "all or nothing"*.Note that i do not take this position, I only offer it as a possible defense of JoeDawgs position. If one rejects the double pattern idea then one is left with the single pattern explanation of information, which I hope I have shown to be absurd.
* I am not saying that a grid must streach to infinity.

 

[JoeDawg]

Or are you saying that information is when one pattern ( the pattern of our neurons firing) is superimposed on another pattern )? If so, then there is no difference between a current computer and a conscious understanding. Are you saying that computers are conscious or that people are not conscious?

My impression is that computers are not conscious, at least, in the same way we are, but neither are dogs or mice, or whales or paramecium. I don't know what consciousness is, that's just what seems to be the case. I do think one can get a good analogy from databases, which put data into a certain context. All our knowledge is context specific, but we can also do a statistical analysis and make predictions.

 

[Moridin]

This statement will obviously be filled by my prejudices and biases, but it seems to me that viewing consciousness or cognition as an all-or-nothing proposition that applies to only to humans is terribly anthropocentric and extra-natural. It also seems reasonable to hold that other organisms can use contextual clues to make predictions about the world. There is at least a clear evolutionary rationale for ability for (crude) prediction, just like there is a clear evolutionary rationale for (crude) eyes for locomotive organisms that live in a transparent medium.

 

[Coldcall]

There must be different levels of conciousness. The idea that human's suddenly developed consciousness as an emergent property seems pretty unlikely. More like that consciousness emerged slowly, layer upon layer, and no doubt there were important bifurcations along the way, but it did not happen overnight.

I would imagine even microbes have some level of consiciousness. Perhaps the ability to reproduce is a twin requisite for consciousness to emerge in its most primitive configuration and we happen to be at the other end of the scale.

If microbes and animals don't have any consciousness then it would appear that they are some sort of zombie type cut-outs used as stepping stones for us and consciousness to evolve. Unlikely.

 

[wittgenstein]

I'm confused. Why do you think that I said that only humans can be conscious? True, I did say that current computers are not conscious but that was the extent of my eliminations for possible consciousness.