this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
96 points (91.4% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26701 readers
3202 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics.


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Three possibilities come to mind:

Is there an evolutionary purpose?

Does it arise as a consequence of our mental activities, a sort of side effect of our thinking?

Is it given a priori (something we have to think in order to think at all)?

EDIT: Thanks for all the responses! Just one thing I saw come up a few times I'd like to address: a lot of people are asking 'Why assume this?' The answer is: it's purely rhetorical! That said, I'm happy with a well thought-out 'I dispute the premiss' answer.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] WatDabney@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 months ago

That's a fascinating concept.

And yes - though a yank, I know Doctor Who. ;)

(And this is the point at which I accidentally tapped "Reply" last time through, which is why there's a deleted post before this one)

Anyway...

My first reaction was that it didn't make sense that a consciousness could find itself attached to (hosted by?) a different mind and just blithely continue on.

But the more I think about it, the more I think that's at least reasonable, and possibly even likely.

A consciousness might be comparable to a highly sophisticated and self-aware frontend. Any range of data or software can be stored and run through it, and when new data or even a new piece of software is introduced, the frontend/consciousness can and will (if it's working correctly) integrate it with the system, and it can review the data and software it's overseeing and find flaws and (unless the ego subsystem intervenes) amend or replace it, and so on.

And viewed that way, and taking into account the likely mechanics of the whole thing, it really is possible and arguably even likely that it would be essentially content-neutral. It would make sense that while the experience of "I the audience" is itself a distinct thing, the specific details - the beliefs and values and memories and such that make it up - are just data pulled from memory, and it could just as easily pull any other data from any other memory (if it had access to it).

Fascinating....