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Myron @ Nov 27 2007, 09:54
Searle defines "is observer-relative" as "exists only relative to the intentionality of observers, users, agents, etc.".
In that sense no, my consciousness doesn't change in any significant way by being observed - unless they measure with a club. It is observer relative in that our hypothetical friends from alpha centauri with three octave eyesight, hearing from subsonic to ultrasonic, the smell sensitivity of a dog, plus echolocation and electric field senses, even if their powers of abstract thought were only comparable or even slightly less than ours would consider us nearly mobile boulders. The depth of their internal states would almost have to mirror the complexity of their senses. They would, with considerable justification consider us barely conscious (remember that sensate is a near synonym of "conscious", and the near antonym "insensible")
On the other hand I've been known to wake up whenever my boss comes near.
In either case what does "observer relative" as you've specified have to do with the argument? The way it's been used in this thread (as I see/remember it) is the way I've been using it - differing relative assessments of the same data by different observers (and actually different data available to different observers), not in the Heisenberg sense of state changes intrinsic to the process of observation.
-- TWZ
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