Combining Texts

Ideas for 'The Really Hard Problem', 'Propositions' and 'Being You'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / e. Cause of consciousness
Maybe a system is conscious if the whole generates more information than its parts [Seth]
     Full Idea: The main claim of Tononi's 'integrated information theory' is that a system is conscious to the extent that its whole generates more information than its parts.
     From: Anil Seth (Being You [2021], I.3)
     A reaction: Seth seems to present this as an 'interesting' proposal. I find it unlikely that consciousness could be explain in terms of information, or that a machine constructed on this principle would thus become conscious. (Databases pass this test).
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 2. Unconscious Mind
Research suggest that we overrate conscious experience [Flanagan]
     Full Idea: The emerging consensus is that we probably overrate the power of conscious experience in our lives. Freud, of course, said the same thing for different reasons.
     From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Ontology')
     A reaction: [He cites Pockett, Banks and Gallagher 2006]. Freud was concerned with big deep secrets, but the modern view concerns ordinary decisions and perceptions. An important idea, which should incline us all to become Nietzscheans.