Early meditations on Mind

[Telarus]

Just so you have some closer to hand sources:

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2008-09-11/article/31102?headline=Wild-Neighbors-Corvid-Minds-Know-Yourself-Know-Your-Enemy

http://www.stoweboyd.com/mind/2008/08/mirror-self-rec.html

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2517621

http://integral-options.blogspot.com/2007/02/bird-brains-on-corvid-intelligence.html

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=corvid+mirror+study&start=10&sa=N

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Ah thanks Telarus, I was just about to go hunting for the Magpie/mirror experiment

Of course, even if it were to come to light that no animals can recoginize themselves in mirrors... it does little good in determining if they have consciousness... Young humans appear to have consciousness, yet they don't necessarily recoginize themselves as being the baby in the mirror.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Consciousness is a very poorly defined term. We can test sentience, sort of, and metacognition, as well as specific applications of a combination therein, but it's pretty hard to test consciousness itself since it seems to be an emergent property of all the parts. In other words, I think that the Turing Test is a pretty good hack from a maths POV, assuming you agree with the axiomatic nature of the identity of indistinguishables (which is purely pragmatic anyway). But, we probably can't expect birds to pass the turing test -- many people can't pass it (myself included). Someone nonfluent in the language of the test (or functionally fluent but not quite fluent) could easily fail. Before we can test consciousness, we need to define it, and before we test consciousness in animals, we need to define it in a way that doesn't include "human" in the phrasing of any criteria. Problem with that is that some animals would pass and a lot of humans in relatively high positions would not :P

[Kai]

Thank you for using the word emergent in regard to consciousness Enki. It sends shivers of joy through me.

Zero: I had only heard about the use of signs. Even if it is not ASL, a hand sign in any form in regards to simple need was what I have heard. Thats more or less what I was saying. Self  recognition and tool usage still stand.

[Triple Zero]

of course i just needed to debunk the ASL story

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Unfortunately, my conceptual graph of timewave zero (reversing from the retrofitted explanation made up after the actual graph, which was based on an equation worked out from cryptic clues gotten during a shroom trip that the brothers Mckenna took) when finally graphed looks nothing like the official Mckenna timewave zero graph. However, unlike the Mckenna graph, it actually makes sense. I worked it out at one point and got it displaying nicely in gnuplot, so next time I bring it up I'll take a screenie.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

This is the closest to my conceptualization shapewise, however it actually is mathematically opposite. My conceptualization was that of a sine wave whose amplitude was an odd exponent of the closeness to zero and whose length was logarithmic to the same. As systemization progresses, the model grows exponentially to time with the contstraints growing linearly, the model size going through a dropoff when it hits an empirical constraint that it cannot coexist with (the rutherford experiment with the tin foil shows that the plum pudding model of the atom cannot be correct, for instance), at which point the size of the model decreases. The constraints remain, though, and make it quicker to build up a new model. At a certain point (the intersection with the Y axis) the length of a cycle is epsilon and the amplitude is omega (or, if the continuity theorem holds up, alef null; i.e., infinity). This means that within an infinitely short period of time, there are an infinite number of creations and rejections of models of a growingly infinite size despite the linearity of the constraints. So in my model, it would be sort of that shape but get sharper and taller and more jaggedy at the end, while at the very end it would be a straight line nearly on the axis.