A few definitions

15/12/2008 by admin.

I am not a great one for coining new terms. But when talking about consciousness, the existing terms can have a variety of meanings and so using them can mislead. So…I am going to give my readers some definitions of how I use some very vague words. That does not mean that I disapprove of other meanings for the words – I am just trying to clarify how I have been using them.

Reality and Model/s of Reality:

This is like the pair of concepts that Eliezer Yudkowsky calls the territory and the map of the territory. What we feel is the real world is not but is actually a construct that we have created and hope is near to the real world. For example, we do not know how many dimensions reality may have; our model of reality has three dimensions. We experience, live in and know our models of reality, not reality.

Nervous System and Brain:

All cells are irritable (react to their environments) and can communicate with other cells, but some cells in multi-cellular animals make a career of these abilities and become neuron-type cells. Groups of neurons, acting together, are nervous systems. Neurons can specialize and become sensory, motor or various inter-neurons. If sensory neurons communicate directly with motor neurons then only reflexes are possible. If the layers of inter-neurons between sensory and motor neurons are large and complex enough, we have a brain that can do complex learning and thinking functions. A brain is not magic, just very, very complex biological organ.

Brain and Mind:

The difference between brain and mind is like the difference between the heart and circulation or between the gut and digestion. It is the difference between a lot of cells forming an organ and the biological function of the organ. What the brain does is mind – at least that is what we are primarily interested in here, rather than more primitive life-support functions. The mind function includes things like perception, cognition, learning, predicting, planning, remembering, acting, reacting, evaluating. These are what a brain does. (As mind is a physical process not a physical thing, the notion of a ‘state of mind’ is somewhat meaningless.)

Conscious mind and Unconscious mind:

There is just one mind and these terms are meaningless. We have a mind and we are aware of some things the mind is doing some of the time. The bulk of mind activity escapes our awareness.

Consciousness:

An awareness of some part of what the mind is doing (not the ‘doing’ but the ‘awareness of doing’) is consciousness. It is the nature of this awareness that is the subject of this blog. As this awareness is very metabolically costly, it must be important to the mind’s working – but how and why? 

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