> Descartes said "I think, therefore I am".  Maybe a more illuminating
> thing to say in this context would be "I experience self-consciousness,
> therefore I am".  If we go down that road, then many things seem more
> clear.

ERROR: USE OF FORBIDDEN TERM, SELF CONSCIOUSNESS!!!!!!

-- Ooops, this is not arcondev but squeaklist... I published a list of
forbidden terms to arcondev at yahoogroups.com  including "self
consciousness."

Her's a few argument fragments indicating why this is grosly bogus: 

- I hardly consider *myself* to be self conscious. Any successful
attempt at self-concious AI will *certainly* be far for more
self-conscious than I. =\

- I do not see anything that would indicate any special status of what
may be called "self consciousness" from any other form of consciousness,
Infact I consider the self the least interesting form of consciousness
and I can prove that evolution agrees with me. 

- If humans were indeed even remotely as self-conscious as some of them
claim to be, Attempts at creating artificially intelligent machines
would have been created in the 50's...

Summary: If you invent consciousness one morning, you will have
'self-consciousness' by mid afternoon....


> The processor runs two threads which provide us the magic of
> self-consciousness: an observer/scheduler thread, and an observed
> thread.  The role of the observer/scheduler is to literally observe and
> schedule the observed thread.  The observed thread is usually a
> particular interface to the resources of the brain.  These threads are
> usually the ones we say that think.

Bullshit!
1. threads have no meaning in the brain, everything is just one huge
computation. 

If I were to submit to this conceptualization, I would insist that there
only exists the "observed" thread. It has absolutly no nead to be
"scheduled". 

> The sense of identity comes from the observer thread. It is where the
> decision regarding who we are is made, it's also where we interpret our
> perceptions according to our intentions.

Bull. 
Those functions are the foundation of motovation, Look for them in the
hipocampus and hypothalamus.

There is no "decision" involved, We just *are*. These are hard-coded
aspects of ourself that cannot be changed except through nanosurgery...

-- 
Uncle Sam has the Gremlin's touch.
http://users.erols.com/alangrimes/  <my website.