1. The basis of thought
It was the french philosopher Rene Descartes, who stated: "Cognito
Ergo Sum.", which means - I have been told - "Ik think, therefor I
exist. Although Descartes was not a sollipsist in any way, his bases
for filosophy would not exlude solipsism, and therefor I would
personally want to adept a more pragmatic basis for my world-view.
Especially for the Internet I adopted this broader basis, that tells
me:
"I react to what I consider to be other peoples posts on this NG
therefor I exist, the NG exists and other people exist".
Now what are these other people?
In order to communicate with them - which I am obviously trying to do
- I must assume, them to have mental abilities not unlike my own. In
other words They must have a mind like my own.
A mind - mind you - being a human brain in good working order.
So whenever I speak to a person, by doing so I am asserting that she
or he is indeed by and large my intellectual equal. He or she is a
conscious individual.
2. Does a conscious machine exist?
There was this other great thinker called Alan Turing, who was into
designing computers long before it was technically possible to make
them. So he was ahead of his time. But he might even have been ahead
of our time, when he laid down the Turing principle: If a machine can
answer our questions in a way that can not be distiguished from the
answers of a human being, the machine should be considered conscious.
There have been many objections to this principle, but I think none of
these objections hold ground.
3.What is consciousness?
Daniel C. Dennet is "Consciousness explained", proposes that conscious
thought came into existance only after speach was evolved. He
theorizes that early man, started talking to himself and in that way
was able to direct his thought more efficiently.
Pondering on these 3 things - and seeing that communication lies at
the basis of consciousnees each and every time, I have come to the
conclusion that a consciouss mind is nothing more than a brain that is
able to communicate in a humanly fashion. Maybe there could also be a
dolphin conscioussness, or an Elephants conscioussness, but at the
momnent these ideas are beyond our ability of exploration. As long as
we are not able to understand human conscioussness, we should indeed
refrain from making any definit statement about them.
If however it is true, that a consciouss mind is a brain that cannot
only talk to other similar brains, but reaches it's peek by talking to
itself, we should no longer be surprised, by the multitude of posts we
find on any NG made by people who do not seem to communicate, who do
not seem to listen to others, but who seem keen on posting for the
sake of reading their own posts. These are brains that are becoming
consciouss.:)
Thanks to Rene Descart, Alan Turing, Daniel Dennett, and - the devils
advocate - Bob White.
Think for yourself
Peter van Velzen August 2003
Atheist#1107
Amstelveen
The Netherlands (Aug 5, 1950)
.
|
