"Kevin Aylward" 
wrote in news:brgdae
$1cp1$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org:

> "Understanding" itself requires consciousness,
> therefore consciousness cannot be "understood"
> without referring to itself for the explanation,
> therefore the "hard problem" of consciousness,
> is intrinsically unsolvable as it is self referral.
> 
> "I now understand how inanimate matter results in
> consciousness. What do you mean by "understand"?
> Understanding is that quality which results when
> one has consciousness".
 

I disagee that understanding reuires consciousness. I can write down an 
understanding, and when someone else reads it they will absorb it as an 
understanding. Now you can say that it requires "consciousness" to 
interpret the writing, but that makes as much sense as saying it requires 
magic to interpret the writing.  The writing is only squiqqles on paper, 
there is no magic there, So the written word in this case is the  
understanding. But the writing is not conscious, and there is no way to 
make the writing conscious. This means to me that there is a difference 
between understanding and consciousness


Yours,

Bill Morse
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