🚀 go-pugleaf

Dear fellow angels on this pinhead:

How amazing it was to find someone else's excellent idea distorted
by a respondent and then have the distortion embraced by the idea's
own originator!  I thought I really liked Chandrasekaran's original
statement that having goals (or desires) and knowledge (or beliefs)
is orthogonal to being conscious.  My experience tells me that the
most intense consciousness -- a direct connection with the world of
the present sensations and feelings, not the past or future -- must
be wordless, and that prevents inclusion of beliefs and most goals.

Talking to researcher friends who specialize in strokes and other
neurological losses of consciousness, I have concluded that we can
only be conscious OF SOMETHING, not reside in some absolute
isolated mental "state of consciousness".  What's in your
consciousness is simply what you feel is IMPORTANT (worth paying
attention to) at that particular time.

Computers may someday be intelligent, and even conscious, when,
given a complex context, they can answer the question:  WHAT IS
IMPORTANT?  Being able to establish priorities is essential for
survival (a key test of intelligence).  And being able to focus
attention on what's important is essential for consciousness.
There may be be about seven levels of consciousness, each revealed
by the responses of the organisms in question:

1.  Consciousness of spatial gradients (e.g., temperature, acidity,
gravity; bacteria and plants have this, and respond by moving)
2.  Consciousness of things changing through time (e.g., flies can see
a hand coming and avoid it, a crude form of memory and prediction)
3.  Consciousness of "others," of things persisting through time (e.g.,
dogs can remember for a long time who beat them, and maybe attack)
4.  Consciousness of self (some chimpanzees seem to know what
they should look like in a mirror, and show surprise if painted)
5.  Consciousness of being conscious (Descartes thought this was
useful; talking about consciousness is a giveaway here)
6.  Consciousness of being able to change one's consciousness (this
doesn't occur often in most people, but meditation is one way)
7.  Consciousness of the unity of consciousness in our universe (a
real tough one, but great wisdom and peace-of-mind could result)

Yours sincerely,
                Steven Kilston    (semi-learned astronomer)
                Lockheed Research Labs
                Palo Alto
                kilston@rddvax.decnet.lockheed.com