Book Review: “The Feeling of Life Itself” | by Dan Saunders | Medium https://share.google/MCvdJCcCXGuYwQN3y

He argues that consciousness is proportional to the degree of integrated information of a system, and thus, humans are more conscious than simpler mammals, which are more conscious than bugs, which are more conscious than single-celled organisms, because each have larger and more integrated brains / nervous systems than the next. Computers are therefore minimally conscious (no matter the programming), argues Koch, since they can be reduced to their individual components, which can easily be decoupled from their neighbors without losing their individual functionality

For something to exist from the point of view of the world, extrinsically, it must be able to influence things and things must be able to influence it. That is what it means to have causal power. When something can’t make a difference to anything in the world or be influenced by anything in the world, it is causally impotent. Whether or not it exists makes no difference to anything.

Christof Koch, The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness Is Widespread but Can't Be Computed



What's the hardest question to answer?
Who are you?
When did human beings stop questioning world, life, and themselves?
What are the answers?
I'm a woman, lawyer/doctor/dentist/lover of flowers/history/good food. Is this really my essence, or an extremely simplistic answer connected only to the materiality represented by the cube?
And the expansive and eternal part?
What's the difference between consciousness and intelligence?

Who are you?
Excellent day 🌻

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"Watering the Garden," Peter Mørk Mønsted, 1925.

"Sunset after a storm on the coast of Sicily," 1853.

- Andreas Achenbach
(1815-1910)

"Contemplation" 2018
Angus McEwan (b. 1963)