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By Root 1643 0

“Which sewing machine is me?” Well, of course, none of them is you — and that’s because none of them perceives anything. You see brains that house strange loops as being just as inert and identity-lacking as sewing machines, pinwheels, or merry-go-rounds. But the funny thing is that the beings whose brains house those strange loops don’t agree with you that they have no identity. One of them insists, “I’m the one right here, looking at this purple flower, not the one over there, drinking a milkshake!” Another one insists, “I’m the one drinking this chocolate shake, not the one looking at that flower!” Each one of them is convinced of being somewhere and of seeing things and hearing things and having experiences. What makes you reject their claims?

SL #642: I don’t reject their claims. Those claims are perfectly valid — it’s just that their validity has nothing to do with brains housing strange loops. You’re focusing on the wrong thing. Any claims of “being here” and “being conscious” are valid because there is something extra, something over and above strange loops, that makes a brain be the locus of a soul. I can’t tell you just what it is, but I know this is true, because I am not just physical stuff happening somewhere in the universe. I experience things, such as that purple flower in the garden and that loud motorcycle a couple of blocks away. And my experience is the primary data on which everything else that I say is based, so you cannot deny my claim.

SL #641: How is that any different from what I’ve described? A sufficiently complex brain not only can perceive and categorize but it can verbalize what it has categorized. Like you, it can talk about flowers and gardens and motorcycle roars, and it can talk about itself, saying where it is and where it is not, it can describe its present and past experiences and its goals and beliefs and confusions… What more could you want? Why is that not what you call “experience”?

SL #642: Words, words, words! The point is that experience involves more than mere words — it involves feelings. Any experiencer worthy of the term has to see that brilliant purple color of the flower and feel it as such, not merely drone the sound “purple” like an automated voice in a telephone menu tree. Seeing a vivid purple takes place below the level of words or ideas or symbols — it is more primordial. It’s an experience directly felt by an experiencer. That’s the difference between true consciousness and mere “artificial signaling” as in a mechanical-sounding telephone menu tree.

SL #641: Would you say nonverbal animals enjoy such “primordial” experiences? Do cows savor the deep purple of a flower just as intensely as you do? And do mosquitoes? If you say “yes”, doesn’t that come dangerously close to suggesting that cows and mosquitoes have just as much consciousness as you do?

SL #642: Mosquito brains are far less complex than mine, so they can’t have the same kinds of rich experiences as I do.

SL #641: Now wait a minute. You can’t have it both ways. A moment ago, you were insisting that brain complexity doesn’t make any difference — that if a brain lacks that special je ne sais quoi that separates things that feel from things that don’t feel, then it’s not a locus of consciousness. But now you’re saying that the complexity of the brain in question does make a difference.

SL #642: Well, I guess it has to, to some extent. A mosquito doesn’t have the equipment to appreciate a purple flower in the way I do. But maybe a cow does, or at least it comes closer. But complexity alone does not account for the presence of feeling and experience in brains.

SL #641: Let’s consider a bit more deeply this notion of experiencing and feeling the world outside. If you were to stare at a big broad sheet of pure, uniform purple, your favorite shade ever, entirely filling your visual field, would you experience the same rush as when you see that color in the petals of a flower blooming in a garden?

SL #642: I doubt it. Part of what makes my experience of a purple flower so intense is all the subtle shades