gbn474@leah.Albany.Edu (Gregory Newby) (10/20/88)
In article <1119@leah.Albany.Edu> gbn474@leah.Albany.Edu (Gregory Newby) writes: (sorry, Shannon: I lost your reference line) >>Possible conclusion: consciousness, like most things we can name >>in nature, oscillates. >> >Other possible conclusion: we unconsciously attach meaning to apparently >randon patterns i.e. we hear the music, we see the lights, we notice that there >are some of the lights lit on the beat, and disregard the rest as noise. >Hence, we have a pattern where none existed before. Sounds like pattern- >recognition to me. :-) >>--newbs >-=- Shannon Mann -=- smann@watdcsu.UWaterloo.ca >P.S. I'd like to know what 'oscillating consciousness' is supposed to mean. Take it as you want. We know that people can not attend to the entire environment at once (or, at least that's what the cog. psychologists have found). Possibly, people are attuned more at some times than others, in a regular pattern. Personally, I would consider a sort of continuous sine function before a binary on-off type of model. An upcoming article, I believe in _Quality and Quantity_, considers seriously the idea that ALL human phenomena are based on such osciallations and the interference patterns they produce. We're talking from individual memory and thought to dyadic interaction to group or mob behavior. The article is by John Foldy, and is an extension of his Dissertation. I would be happy to mail the reference to interested parties. --newbs ( gbnewby@rodan.acs.syr.edu gbn474@leah.albany.edu ) ps: a book which I do NOT recommend, but makes similar considerations in ways that make anyone knowledgable of natural science feel very ill, is _Stalking the Wild Pendulum_ by Iztac Benton (sp?).
dez@roberta.UUCP (Dez in New York City) (10/22/88)
> Take it as you want. We know that people can not attend to the entire > environment at once (or, at least that's what the cog. psychologists > have found). No that is not what cognitive psychologists have found. What we have found is: a) people gain as much information from the environment as their sensory systems are able to pick up. This is a very large amount of information, it may well be the entire environment, at least as far as the environment appears at the sense receptors. b) people have a limited capacity to reflect or introspect upon the wide range of information coming in from sensory systems. Various mechanisms, some sense specific, some not, operate to draw people's immeadiate awareness to information that is important. It is this immeadiate awareness that is limited, not perception of, or attention to, the environment. Dez - Cognitive Psychologist uunet!vdx!roberta!dez