<div dir="auto">Yes, you were unconscious.  As you know, I had that experience a few days ago.<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Frank<br><br><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature" dir="auto">-----------------------------------<br>Frank Wimberly<br><br>My memoir:<br><a href="https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly">https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly</a><br><br>My scientific publications:<br><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2">https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2</a><br><br>Phone (505) 670-9918</div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 12:13 PM Nick Thompson <<a href="mailto:nickthompson@earthlink.net">nickthompson@earthlink.net</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div class="m_-5518403359889495465WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Hi Frank, <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">The problem is that one has immediately to ask, what is the contrast class of experiencing consciousness?  Experiencing non-consciousness?  I think for your line of thinking, where consciousness is direct, that’s an oxymoron.  For my line of thinking, when I woke up from my surgery and 24 hours had passed, I had a powerful experience of my non-consciousness.  <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Nick <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Nicholas S. Thompson<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Clark University<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer"><span style="color:#0563c1">http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/</span></a><u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> Friam [mailto:<a href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">friam-bounces@redfish.com</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Frank Wimberly<br><b>Sent:</b> Saturday, April 27, 2019 11:33 AM<br><b>To:</b> The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <<a href="mailto:friam@redfish.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">friam@redfish.com</a>><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [FRIAM] A Question For Tomorrow<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><div><p class="MsoNormal">Jon,<u></u><u></u></p><div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">How about "experiences consciousness" in place of has consciousness.<u></u><u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">Frsnk<u></u><u></u></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><div><p class="MsoNormal">-----------------------------------<br>Frank Wimberly<br><br>My memoir:<br><a href="https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly</a><br><br>My scientific publications:<br><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2</a><br><br>Phone (505) 670-9918<u></u><u></u></p></div></div></div><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><div><div><p class="MsoNormal">On Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 11:03 AM Jon Zingale <<a href="mailto:jonzingale@gmail.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">jonzingale@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<u></u><u></u></p></div><blockquote style="border:none;border-left:solid #cccccc 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in"><div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">Nick,<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">I love that the title of this thread is 'A question for tomorrow'.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">My position continues to be that the label `conscious` is meaningful,<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">though along with you, I am not sure what language to use around it.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">For instance, can something <i>have</i> consciousness? That said, a<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">conservative scoping of the phenomena I would wish to describe<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">with <i>consciousness language</i> begins with granting consciousness<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">to more than 7 billion things on this planet alone. Presently, for those<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">that agree thus far, it appears that the only way to synthesize new things<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">with consciousness is to have sex (up to some crude equivalence).<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">This constraint seems an unreasonable limitation and so the problem<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">of synthesizing consciousness strikes me as reasonably near, ie.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333"> `a question for tomorrow` and not some distant future.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">You begin by asking about the Turing machine, an abstraction which<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">summarizes what we can say about processing information. Here,<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">I am going to extend Lee's comment and ask that we consider<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">particular implementations or better particular embodiments.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">Hopefully said without too much hubris, given enough time and<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">memory, I can compute anything that a Turing machine can compute.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">The games `Magic the Gathering` and `Mine Craft` are Turing<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">complete. I would suspect that under some characterization, the<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">Mississippi river is Turing complete. It would be a real challenge<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">for me state what abstractions like `Mine Craft` experience, but<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">sometimes I can speak to my own experience. Oscar Hammerstein<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">mused about what Old Man River knows.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">Naively, it seems to me that some kind of information processing,<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">though not sufficient, is necessary for experience and for a foundations<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">for consciousness. Whether the information processor needs to be<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">Turing complete is not immediately obvious to me, perhaps a finite-<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">state machine will do. Still, I do not think that a complete description of<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">consciousness (or whatever it means to experience) can exist without<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">speaking to how it is that a thing comes to sense its world.<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">For instance, in the heyday of analogue synthesizers,  musicians<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">would slog these machines from city to city, altitude to altitude,<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">desert to rain-forested coast and these machines would notoriously<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">respond in kind. Their finicky capacitors would experience the<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">change and changes in micro-farads would ensue. What does an<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">analogue synthesizer know?<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">Cheers,<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333">Jonathan Zingale<u></u><u></u></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333"><u></u> <u></u></span></p></div></div></div><p class="MsoNormal">============================================================<br>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br>Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College<br>to unsubscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br>archives back to 2003: <a href="http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/</a><br>FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a> by Dr. Strangelove<u></u><u></u></p></blockquote></div></div></div>============================================================<br>
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br>
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</blockquote></div>