(Balance!) Consciousness, identity, OBEs... (Identity)

by David Turell , Sunday, March 06, 2011, 01:19 (5010 days ago) @ romansh

Your laptop has feedback circuits. It is not 'aware that it is aware', because the underlying current of the discussion is true consciousness.
 
> David are you suggesting the human mind does not have feedback circuits?-Thank you for providing some brain food for me. Those robets will learn more than our automatic vacuum, the roomba, which does have some pattern learning when it is doing a room. That is very interesting research, but from my medical perspective, they will not learn a whole lot about the human brain and its problems. They will need to get to much bigger brains, where more than just some neurons are used as memristors. As for feedback loops, of course the human brain has them. Matt and I were suggesting that what you are describing in your laptop are reflex reactions based on very simple circuitry. 
> 
> I agree whole heartedly that the circuitry of the human brain is far more complex than a laptop and that the human brain is far more capable of data recognition and manipulation than my laptop or even you dog. So are you suggesting that for consciousness there is a critical complexity below which consciousness cannot exist. -That is point of Mortimer Adler's book, "The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes", 1967, Fordham Press. He makes it quite clear that he considers humans different in kind, not degree from the lower primates, because of consciousness.-Jeremy Taylor adds to this point in, "Not A Chimp", 2009, Oxford Press. Our DNA make it look like a 98% match. But that is only counting bases (Nucleotides). Looking at gene structure and phenotypical changes: for example, 6.4% of human genes do not have a copy match in chimps. Genes having to do with immunity are 13% different. There is research to show that we have added a new 7% of our genes in the last 50,000 years.