Re: virus: Re: Technology (was manifest science)

psypher (overload@fastmail.ca)
Thu, 3 Jun 1999 09:09:02 -0400 (EDT)

Joe E. Dees [the answer man] wrote:

> It's superGodelian degree of complexity, which permits recursive
> self-reference and thus allows us to be not only conscious (which
> many animals are), but also self-conscious (conscious of our own
> consciousness - conscious of our conscious selves).

...hey Joe. You've referred to this idea on more than one occasion and I know I [and probably a few others I'm guessing] would appreciate some explanation.

[assuming a non-argumentative tone:]

...as I understand it [still immersed in the learning process here] our consciousness is a process in which the body gathers stimuli from the environment [ie. there are fuzzy things outside the structure of our organism which impinge on the system and elicit response]. Once taken into the organism these stimuli become information which is successively processed through the cognitive system to build up a sensory model of the environment.

...because of the complexity of our organism, features of this model can be cross referenced with experienced past models and predicted future models to provide a point of steady reference [the "self" in which the process is embedded].

...as far as technology [in the traditional "tools and machines" sense] goes, the environment - on all levels from the raw physical systems to the more abstract stimuli constructed by social organizations - are put together to pose organizational problems for the organism, which then responds to the environment by attempting to organize its action in such a way that the variables relate towards its best ends.

...while I don't think evolution "wants" anything or has "intentionality", or acts in any way which is analogous to my [particular organismic] experience of the environment it's a process by which the energy put in to open systems is organized and dissipated. We [as organisms] do the same thing with technological innovation, don't we?

-psypher



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