Without disputing Dan Asimov's assertion that consciousness cannot be an illusion (by which he means, you can't be mistaken in thinking yourself to be conscious), there is a tenable position that illusion is at the core of what we call consciousness. This position becomes even more plausible if we replace "illusion" by "limitations of perception and knowledge". E.g., our limited understanding of ourselves could be at the core of our illusion of having free will (understood as the belief that two incompatible actions A and B that we can imagine ourselves taking are both actions of which we are capable). Jim Propp On Sunday, August 4, 2013, Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> wrote:
P.S. For the concept of consciousness that I'm most interested in, there is no way that a conscious experience (a.k.a. an experience) can be an illusion.
Because, it is what it is. It can be an illusion only when it is interpreted and is discrepant with some notion of reality.
But I'm not thinking of conscious as having an interpretation attached. (That is a perfectly reasonable thing to think about. Just not what I'm thinking of.)
(Of course, interpreting one's own conscious experiences is a conscious experience on its own, and likewise, is what it is.)
--Dan
On 2013-08-04, at 4:49 PM, Thane Plambeck wrote: -----
here is a (presumably hopeless) attempt to define consciousness.
it's a cruel world that wants to eat you. consciousness seems to me to be an adaptive darwinian illusion that organizes your ultimately biological responses to threats in full consonance with the laws of physics, . . . ----- _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun