psotka%white.DECnet@ARI-HQ1.ARPA.UUCP (03/02/87)
It seems to me that we generally have very clear criteria for consciousness (unlike much of the current discussion). We usually ask someone if they remember what happened: if they don't remember we tend to say they were unconscious. There are some general exceptions that prove this rule; namely, people do forget specific things but they generally know that they have forgotten: i.e., some fragmented memories still hang around to produce things like the Tip Of Tongue phenomenon where one knows one knows something but can't retrieve it. That kind of forgetting is clearly distinguished from being unconscious. On the whole there are two kinds of unconsciousness: when one is traumatized with a blow to the head, and when one is sleeping (either naturally or drug-induced). Football players provide everyday examples of the former: often after a violent blow someone stands beside a player asking him what he remembers. A few minutes later he is asked again. Usually when he remembers less the second time, he is pronounced to have a concussion and removed from the game for a while. Sometimes then, he has no recollection of having been asked the first time. Was he unconscious during that first interrogation even though he replied clearly and firmly? Well, on the whole I think that the event is strange and hard to categorize. My response seems to be, "Well, he didn't APPEAR to be unconscious, but I guess he was." It seems to fall into the same category as sleepwalking or talking in one's sleep. My speculative hunch about the topic is that consciousness produces memories because consciousness involves a wierd kind of multiplexing of a person's entire identity, the whole history of all existing memories, with the current percept, the current end segment of the stream of consciousness. There is an ongoing search and matching and resolution of all existing memories, plans, predicates, images, etc. with the current context. This seems to be necessary for awareness, recognition, inferences, etc. and it also somehow results in consciousness or IS consciousness. Let's get to work to find out how and why! ------ -------