Re:A Neuroscientist’s Theory of How Networks Become Consciou...
by bane on Thursday October 30, 2014 @09:10AM
(#8532679)
> I'm experiencing existence
Right, but I don't think this is as unrecognized as you think. Entire systems of ethics are built on the assumption that since I'm experiencing existence, and you are roughly the same as me, you're probably experiencing existence too.
Some systems expand on this and stretch or restrict the definition of "same" from "skin color" to "has a central nervous system" and other notions.
The longer I'm around, the more I start to think that this experience can be really different. Quite a bit of research is going into some fragments of this topic, we call it "intelligence". And we come back surprised whenever we find out that something which we didn't think of as "the same as us", like an octopus, can have it's own "experience of existing".
More recently there's a growing body of work that's starting to show that things even less similar to us might have an experience in their own way. We're finding out plants, for example, have all kinds of interesting and subtle ways of responding to the universe. People are afraid to call this "intelligence", but there's definitely something there.
It may be more that "life", of any kind, can be considered under this notion of experience, and not just self-similar things.
A different spin, "you are the universe experiencing itself"
Right, but I don't think this is as unrecognized as you think. Entire systems of ethics are built on the assumption that since I'm experiencing existence, and you are roughly the same as me, you're probably experiencing existence too.
Some systems expand on this and stretch or restrict the definition of "same" from "skin color" to "has a central nervous system" and other notions.
The longer I'm around, the more I start to think that this experience can be really different. Quite a bit of research is going into some fragments of this topic, we call it "intelligence". And we come back surprised whenever we find out that something which we didn't think of as "the same as us", like an octopus, can have it's own "experience of existing".
More recently there's a growing body of work that's starting to show that things even less similar to us might have an experience in their own way. We're finding out plants, for example, have all kinds of interesting and subtle ways of responding to the universe. People are afraid to call this "intelligence", but there's definitely something there.
It may be more that "life", of any kind, can be considered under this notion of experience, and not just self-similar things.
A different spin, "you are the universe experiencing itself"