The power of seven

I sometimes comment on the power of the number seven, much greater than that of three, despite the coup of this last taken at the Holy Trinity. See, for example, reference 3. Yesterday it cropped up in the form of seven states of mind, necessary and sufficient for that mind to be deemed to be conscious, seven states of mind enumerated at the open access paper at reference 2.

The seven are claimed to have the general support of the great and the good of the world of consciousness and come with lots of references to the work of same. One of them, for example, is called temporal thickness, the persistence in time of the state in question, and with its support going right back to William James, the eminent scientific brother to the eminent writer Henry. One which I for one am happy to sign up to: consciousness is a process in time not a state of being. A property of a particular sort of process more than of a particular sort of data.

However, I might add that I have also veered away from attacking consciousness by the steady, if tricky and sometimes contentious enumeration of its properties, going instead for the throat, a more direct approach with shorter lines of communications, a approach which is apt to miscarry - but which can, if you are lucky, also yield quick results. See reference 4.

PS: checking, I find that the reference to Taunton in the last post was not quite right. It should have been Exeter. See reference 1. My excuse being that there was a Taunton in the course of the same excursion.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Barney+White-Spunner+heavy.

Reference 2: the Transition to Minimal Consciousness through the Evolution of Associative Learning - Zohar Z. Bronfman, Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka - 2016.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/7-up.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/seeing-red-rectangles.html.