Hee, this almost sounds like a BtVS analysis - "Seeing Red: A Study in Conscience".
I first came across blindsight as a prepubescent schoolkid, thanks to a science teacher who was thrilled by the mystery of it (though he didn't call it blindight and he'd come across it as the result of experiments - not done by him, I hasten to add - to cure epilepsy, where some of the nerves connecting the two hemispheres were severed, with the result that - ooh, I'm having to think back an awfully lonmg way now; I think the point was that if you showed the left eye a moving dot, the subject could indicate where it was but couldn't describe it, and when asked they would say they had just guessed). I must admit, I'd never thought of extending it to other cognitive processes - does Humphrey use it as a metaphor or is he seriously suggesting that we make use of "sensory systems for which no cortex exists"? (Or is that your own extrapolation?).
I can't say I'm impressed by the evolutionary explanation - "The apparent mystery of consciousness prompts us to see ourselves as more than mere biological machines, and so strive all the more to preserve our existence". That seems to me to suffer from a definite lack of hormonal oomph (I suspect sheer blind panic will do a better job at preserving your existence than "Oh shit, big nasty predator coming, as something more than mere biological machine I'd better do a runner"), not to mention the fact that creatures (apparently) without consciousness don't see themselves as mere biological machines anyway.
I had an acquaintance at university who suffered from depression, for which she blamed consciousness, and she took the view that consciousness was an evolutionary bungle (like placentas - they developed, and we're stuck with them, but we'd all be better off if we reproduced like marsupials). Since I'm not depressed, I tend not to see consciousness as such a disadvantage, but I'm not convinced that it isn't simply an emergent property of complex cortical systems, rather than a feature that could be actively selected for. And I'm certain it was adaptive in all sorts of useful ways beyond the mere recognition that "I am more than a machine".
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2006-06-07 05:05 am (UTC)I first came across blindsight as a prepubescent schoolkid, thanks to a science teacher who was thrilled by the mystery of it (though he didn't call it blindight and he'd come across it as the result of experiments - not done by him, I hasten to add - to cure epilepsy, where some of the nerves connecting the two hemispheres were severed, with the result that - ooh, I'm having to think back an awfully lonmg way now; I think the point was that if you showed the left eye a moving dot, the subject could indicate where it was but couldn't describe it, and when asked they would say they had just guessed). I must admit, I'd never thought of extending it to other cognitive processes - does Humphrey use it as a metaphor or is he seriously suggesting that we make use of "sensory systems for which no cortex exists"? (Or is that your own extrapolation?).
I can't say I'm impressed by the evolutionary explanation - "The apparent mystery of consciousness prompts us to see ourselves as more than mere biological machines, and so strive all the more to preserve our existence". That seems to me to suffer from a definite lack of hormonal oomph (I suspect sheer blind panic will do a better job at preserving your existence than "Oh shit, big nasty predator coming, as something more than mere biological machine I'd better do a runner"), not to mention the fact that creatures (apparently) without consciousness don't see themselves as mere biological machines anyway.
I had an acquaintance at university who suffered from depression, for which she blamed consciousness, and she took the view that consciousness was an evolutionary bungle (like placentas - they developed, and we're stuck with them, but we'd all be better off if we reproduced like marsupials). Since I'm not depressed, I tend not to see consciousness as such a disadvantage, but I'm not convinced that it isn't simply an emergent property of complex cortical systems, rather than a feature that could be actively selected for. And I'm certain it was adaptive in all sorts of useful ways beyond the mere recognition that "I am more than a machine".