--- On Wed, 11/12/08, Harry Chesley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 1) I'm talking about the "hard question" of > consciousness. > > 2) It is real, as it clearly influences our thoughts. On > the other hand, though it feels subjectively like it is > qualitatively different from other aspects of the world, it > probably isn't (but I'm open to being wrong here).
The correct statement is that you believe it is real. Everybody does. Those who didn't, did not pass on their DNA. > 3) We cannot currently define or measure it, but some day > we will. You can define it any time you want, or use the existing common definition. The real problem is that the existing definitions lead to absurd conclusions, like Chalmer's "fading qualia" argument. To avoid logical inconsistencies, you either have to accept that machines that pass the Turing test have experience or qualia (because there is no test to detect qualia), or that qualia does not exist. The latter would be the logical conclusion, except that it conflicts with a belief that is hard-coded into all human brains. > 4) Until that day comes, it's really hard to have a > non-trivial discussion of it, and too easy to fly off into > wild theories concerning it. > > An analogy: How do you know that humans have blood flowing > through their veins? Looking at them, you can't tell. > Dissecting them after death, you can't tell -- they have > blood, but it's not moving. Cutting them while alive > produces spurts of blood, but that could be just because the > body is generally pressurized, not because there's any > on-going flow through the veins. It requires observing the > internals of the body while alive to determine that blood > actually flows all the time. And it also helps a lot to have > a model of the circulatory system that includes the heart as > a pump, etc. Blood flow can be directly observed, for example, by x-rays during an angioplasty. But that isn't the point. Even without direct observation, blood flow is supported by a lot of indirect evidence, for example, when you inject a drug into a vein it quickly spreads to other parts of the body. Even theories for which evidence is harder to observe, for example, the existence of fractional electric charges in quarks, are accepted because the theory makes predictions that can be tested. But there are absolutely no testable predictions that can be made from a theory of consciousness. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
