CGSC 2001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: What Is Life, Materialism, Autobiographical Memory
28 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Consciousness is an agents subjective awareness of his/her cognitive state. Dualism: consciousness is a property of the non-physical and is not open to scientific explanation. Materialism: consciousness is a kind of physical process and emerges from the biological complexity of the brain. Mysteriasm: consciousness is a physical process but it is too complex for our minds to understand. Functionalism: consciousness is a function of a sufficiently complex computational system (argues for consciousness of ai, computers eventually) Consiousness doubters (doubt that we can capture consciousness) Kinds sensory experience you have are privileged to you so experience cannot be qualitatively modelled. Imagine a zombie version of yourself that functions biologically but lacks consciousness (brain is necessary for consciousness but not sufficient) sophisticated dualism. We need to identify mechanisms, not directly observable in some cases, that produce the conscious behavior we want to explain. One way: to investigate how and when they break down (cases where we are aware that consciousness is lost)
