When we sketch uncle sam, or John Bull, are we attempting to describe real, organized phenomena, perhaps even on their own conscious and self-reflecting, the way a circle in flatland may attempt to describe a sphere that occasionally passes through (particularly if that circle itself is part of that sphere, or at least of another sphere)? In the search for non-human intelligence, I still think we should scrutinize more thoroughly phenomena composed of multiple humans, such as cliques, corporations, sovereign nations, markets, and cultures. After all, we ourselves are composed of systems of multiple cells, where consciousness emerges several years after the system exists, and then persists in it in punctuated format until it ends, even if the system of cells persist. At least that's how it appears to happen. I would have little surprise if it turns out that self-reflective, conscious entities can emerge from systems of humans in interaction, and I mean a consciousness that exists distinct from any of the constituent human consciousnesses, just as our own subjective consciousnesses seem to exist distinct from the "dumb" regulatory processes that individual neurons are in engaged in.
Thanks for fixing the blog comments to allow formatting. You have some great first posts here.
where consciousness emerges several years after the system exists
By consciousness are you referring to awareness, perception and experience or to the personal sense of self?
Posted by: Matthew C | August 03, 2007 at 08:02 PM
MatthewC, thanks for the compliment. I defer to the neuroscientist experts on the exact distinctions of which subjective mental phenomena appear several years after a neuronal system of some format exists, and which appear earlier than "several years". But they all seem to appear sometime after a human (or pre-human set of cells) has a bunch of neurons in a networked system.
So, I think it's possible that subjective conscious entities, with at least personal sense of self (and perhaps awareness and perception) emerge some time period after a bunch of humans form a networked system.
Posted by: Hopefully Anonymous | August 03, 2007 at 11:45 PM