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Robert Saltzman's avatar

Dear Readers,

If you are reading a copy sent to you by email, it contained an important typo.

The problem was in this sentence:

That is strong evidence, in my view, that brains and consciousness are somehow correlated, entangled, implicated, enmeshed, and perhaps affiliated, NOT necessarily causally but perhaps in ways we humans cannot even imagine.

In the email version, the word "NOT" was omitted which destroyed the intent of that sentence. I have corrected this in copies accessed through the url link:

https://robertsaltzman.substack.com/p/identifying-as-a-human-primate-animal

Thanks for reading. Be well.

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Roberto Gejman's avatar

I have a way to describe consciousness which is quite not "mystic" and completely rooted in the material brain-body. I would like to know everybody's thoughts about it. For me consciousness is the knowledge I have, moment to moment about myself and my environment. That includes thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, pictures of the place I am in, estimates of distances between nearby objects, their colors, and many other attributes. These contents vary and fade rapidly and are replaced by others second after second, according to changes in the focus of my attention and other factors. This knowledge resides in my brain, partially in other parts of my body, and I see no need to attribute to it magical or universal (nondual) properties. Now, if we assume this definition, it is easy to see that consciousness must be found in other mammals and it is easily implemented in robots or other artificial contraptions. A robot may well have knowledge about its state and about its environment, and knowledge about its knowledge. Recursivity is an old and very well-known element in all manner of computing software and hardware, nothing new or magical here. Some people use the term "Consciousness" meaning a moral compass or a repository of their values, but that is another issue completely. Thoughts?

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