Not-Self in Sci-Fi: Blindsight by Peter Watts

hmm.  that might be up my alley...

Is this it? 

www.amazon.com/gp/product/0765319640/ref...hsch_vapi_tpbk_p1_i0

Thanks for this Chris, really enjoying it so far.

On order.  

Started reading and like the premise so far!  

In the first 40 pages of the book I am a bit confused by the use of the pronoun  " I "   There is the narrator, Siri.  Then there is a switch to " I " from the viewpoint of the deep space probe.  Is this to show that the deep space probe is sentient or are Siri and the deep space probe somehow the same? 

As I am reading through I am glad this is not a movie yet, or hopefully will never become one!   

The detailed biological backstory of vampires--- how they can see two perspectives at once, for instance is really fascinating. 

The character with multiple personalities being able to somehow translate the language of the Rorschach, Siri being able to understand the "Chinese Room " and them using this information to go in for a closer peek... not sure how you do that in a movie.   ( I am at the encounter with the craft right now )  There are so much packed into this book that is above my pay grade, yet it is still very enjoyable.  Not sure I have the time to take a deeper dive into semiotics right now, though!!

Chris Marti wrote: Is a thing/alien with no self-awareness/consciousness/sentience actually possible? Would it be a being, or a machine? Is it possible for a consciousness-less thing to be anything but a machine? When does increasing complexity lead to consciousness, and is that inevitable? If there were to be no consciousness anywhere, does anything actually matter, or does anything even exist at all?

This has been nagging at me since I finished Blindsight weeks ago.

I have not read the book. No interest in reading it just now but I would like to offer a view in case you find it interesting. 

We know Terry from DhO, and if we choose to believe his claims then we can take into consideration that life and living is possible without being conscious. Like at all, and yet go about life as if fully conscious and functional. 

He claims that he experienced cessation for several weeks. Only when he was conscious again did he realise that he had no memory at all about anything within those several weeks. He asked friends and family if he was ok and behaving unusual but they replied he was very normal, going to work and socialising in a normal fashion. 

My cessation (not)experience , which was lack of consciousness, lasted short. But I can conclude that my body did not collapse due to unconsciousness but continued to walk on its feet dragging my son in his wooden cart. 

In my case we are likely talking part of a second (even though there was no time or anything when cessation) as I was doing exactly the same thing before and after. 

However if I was able to continue walking even for so short without consciousness then Terry maybe also able to continue functioning normally without consciousness taking place. Was he a robot during these few weeks? A zombie? 

So what is consciousness and is it necessary to live a normal human life? 

My apologies if I’m off.  

Let me add another experience of mine  

I was once or twice so drunk that I’ve done lots of stuff I absolutely dont remember! At all! A friend who was with me told me about what was happening. I could not believe but it seems it was true as I indeed had no trousers on that morning. … anyway. 

In this case we know alcohol has something to do with it. But still I have no idea what was going on and yet I was very much actively involved as if fully conscious. 

So what is consciousness and does it even exist if there is no memory to blab about it? 

Again sorry if im off  

Slowly trudging through the book, about half-way through and it appears that Rorshach has some weird tentacled lifeforms that are really not smart at all. ( according to the observations of the biologic structure ) The crew is analyzing one and is trying to understand its' inner workings.  It did not help that it was shot!   Things are getting a bit more interesting...  I have time for about 20 pages at night until the weekend.

Chris Marti wrote: Is a thing/alien with no self-awareness/consciousness/sentience actually possible? Would it be a being, or a machine? Is it possible for a consciousness-less thing to be anything but a machine? When does increasing complexity lead to consciousness, and is that inevitable? If there were to be no consciousness anywhere, does anything actually matter, or does anything even exist at all?

This has been nagging at me since I finished Blindsight weeks ago.

Ugh, okay I'm getting this book too...  In my ponderings, I have considered that consciousness creates existence, but it's the existence of consciousness --- very tautological, but I can't come up with a different explanation. In the same way that being on a drug creates a world that only exists when you're on the drug, when consciousness "see" the world, the world it sees isn't the dead physical reality that existed before consciousness, rather it's seeing a view of the world that is only possible through consciousness. 

(As a result, I think of human consciousness as a collection of smaller tautological consciousness, the tautology of smelling, tasting, the tautology of the three poisons/gates, the tautology of the 5 elements, the tautology of language, the tautology of 6 realms, the tautologies of the meaning-making-worlviews of spiral dynamics/ego development, ...  It seems to me that subject-object of any type of consciousness co-emerges, it's never that a new subject is created and it sees another separate object. And of course the $40,000 question, is there really a "central" consciousness that "has" these component tautological consciousnesses?)

There's the classic flip of the Chinese Room idea in the short story called "They are Made of Meat", basically saying "how on earth can anything made of meat be conscious?"  Short Stories: They're Made out of Meat by Terry Bisson (eastoftheweb.com)

"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."
"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."
"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."

https://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=3966

I would like to know a little bit more about the procedures that were done to him.  Maybe I was half asleep when that was being described.   It is left pretty vague.  Part of his brain was removed. Which part?  He has the ability to understand underlying motives of people and describe why they are acting the way they are...