PHYSICS, BIOLOGY AND CONSCIOUSNESS.

Chalmer's ideas on Physics and Biology as related to an understanding of consciousness

Nothing particularly spiritual should necessarily appear in such theories.

"If this view is right, then in some ways a theory of consciousness will have more in common with a theory in physics than a theory in biology. Biological theories involve no principles that are fundamental in this way, so biological theory has a certain complexity and messiness to it; but theories in physics, insofar as they deal with fundamental principles, aspire to simplicity and elegance. The fundamental laws of nature are part of the basic furniture of the world, and physical theories are telling us that the basic furniture is remarkably simple. The principles of simplicity, elegance, and even beauty that drive physicists' search for a fundamental theory will also apply to a theory of consciousness." (David J. Chalmers)

This viewpoint is controversial (Jesper Hoffmeyer). Biology and the brain's biology is full of signs and symbols, starting with DNA and its enzyme system: and so it is the realm of semiotics, of biosemiotics. And semiotics - the science of signs and symbols - is not a chapter of physics. Alarms are much more biosemiotic than biophysical.

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• danger related steps towards consciousness

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• models revisited

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• scope
• experience and physical-psychophysics
• artificial intelligence and problem spaces
• operating systems and robots
• architecture, space and the hard problem
• danger perception
• visual attention
• attention networks
• brain develops mind
• internal clock
• distress and attention
• external--->information....internal--->danger experience
• Shannon's surprise
• binary strings and extreme danger
• danger feelings
• danger avoidance with little conscious attention
• conscious intentions and what memory is for
• starting with P-consciousness
• new models
• danger diagnostic and treatment as order parameters
• toward a theory of the brain?

2.feb.1999

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Glosario de Carlos von der Becke.