🚀 go-pugleaf

mfinegan@uceng.UC.EDU (michael k finegan) writes:
> But, is dreaming a lower level of consciousness than watching 'Wheel of
> Fortune' ? I don't think you can answer that question, empirically, or
> otherwise. Moral: consciousness is in the eye of the beholder.

Easy.  When you're dreaming you have a dramatically reduced ability to
distiguish true from false assertions about yourself.  While watching TV,
it is common to forget that you're hungry, bored, and uncomfortable, but
most people still remember that they have eyes, ears, and a remote control.

What I've been calling "the self-description scale" shares the useful
attribute of objectivity with the Turing Test.  Indeed, there is nothing
in the TT or in my proposal that would upset a behaviorist, though I am
no behaviorist myself.

Let me restate the self-description scale:

For any object, there is a set of sentences which refer to that object.
For any two objects, if object A can correctly affirm or deny each
sentence which refers to itself when object B can do the same (mutatis
mutandis), and object A can correctly affirm or deny some sentences which
object B cannot, then A has superior self-descriptive capacity than B.

It's not formally a part of the criterion, but I should say that ordinary
physical description of one's body and its relation to the surroundings
is the main thing I have in mind.  I should also note that this is *not*
the only criterion relevant to judgements of intelligence.

Whether or not this scale has any relation to the various notions of
consciousness proposed by psychologists and philosophers is a separate
(but not unimportant) question.  I do think this scale agrees roughly
with everyday talk about consciousness - when you're asleep (ie
unconscious) you don't have much to say about yourself (or anything else).
Rocks have nothing to say, chimpanzees have only a little.  People will
go on for hours ...