[MD] Consciousness

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Bo, Platt, Mel,

On Dec 16, 2008, at 10:22 AM, Platt Holden wrote:

> [Bo]
>> Animals awareness (biological value perception) are by senses, hope
>> we agree about that? Also that sleep isn't present at the lower end of
>> the bio. scale, it has something to do with more complex neural
>> systems. Regarding "dynamic" in the static range I am skeptical
>

An animals awareness can be compared to an infants awareness:

Lila: "One can imagine how an infant in the womb acquires awareness of 
simple distinctions
such as pressure and sound, and then at birth acquires more complex 
ones of light and
warmth and hunger. We know these distinctions are pressure and sound 
and light and
warmth and hunger and so on but the baby doesn't."

Steve: In other words, for the baby, hunger and sounds and light are 
not static patterns, yet.
They are still undifferentiated experience.

Lila: "We could call them stimuli but the baby doesn't identify them as 
that. From the baby's point of view, something, he knows not what, 
compels attention. This generalized "something," Whitehead's "dim 
apprehension," is Dynamic Quality. 

Steve: If we can imagine that from the baby's perspective this is 
dynamic quality, then from an animal's perspective we can also imagine 
what dynamic quality is like. But remember as I cautioned recently in a 
post to Arlo, we are no longer in the perspective of radical empiricism 
when we imagine what the perspectives of others must be like--whether 
other humans, or rocks and trees.

Regards,
Steve