Joe E. Dees [the answer man] wrote:
> It's superGodelian degree of complexity, which permits recursive
...hey Joe. You've referred to this idea on more than one occasion
and I know I [and probably a few others I'm guessing] would
appreciate some explanation.
[assuming a non-argumentative tone:]
...as I understand it [still immersed in the learning process here]
our consciousness is a process in which the body gathers stimuli from
the environment [ie. there are fuzzy things outside the structure of
our organism which impinge on the system and elicit response]. Once
taken into the organism these stimuli become information which is
successively processed through the cognitive system to build up a
sensory model of the environment.
> self-reference and thus allows us to be not only conscious (which
> many animals are), but also self-conscious (conscious of our own
> consciousness - conscious of our conscious selves).
...because of the complexity of our organism, features of this model can be cross referenced with experienced past models and predicted future models to provide a point of steady reference [the "self" in which the process is embedded].
...as far as technology [in the traditional "tools and machines" sense] goes, the environment - on all levels from the raw physical systems to the more abstract stimuli constructed by social organizations - are put together to pose organizational problems for the organism, which then responds to the environment by attempting to organize its action in such a way that the variables relate towards its best ends.
...while I don't think evolution "wants" anything or has "intentionality", or acts in any way which is analogous to my [particular organismic] experience of the environment it's a process by which the energy put in to open systems is organized and dissipated. We [as organisms] do the same thing with technological innovation, don't we?
-psypher