Eric S., This is excellent! I think you capture the place of the naive conversationalist quite well.
The next step, I think, is to move towards Orwell / Peirce. Peirce would assert, I think, that the question is more than JUST a language game, and Orwell would assert, I think, a bit of a moral imperative to take the task more seriously than that. In the Orwell / Peirce move, we assert that there must be some aspect of the world you are gesturing at with the terms "perpetual motion" and "machine" and we assert that for you to "really" imagine a perpetual motion machine, you must ensure there is no contradiction between what you hand wave at with those terms. That is, you must see through the consequences of your imagined device, to ensure that the consequences of one trait do not contradict the consequences of the other trait. If they contradict, then you can only imagine one or the other (or be schizophrenic in at least this limited context). Most people have a pretty good grasp on motion, and what it would mean to keep moving more-or-less forever. So, we probably have little to think about there. That means that the big question is: What do you know about machines? Most people (my naive conversationalists) know very little. On that basis, I suspect that the average person CAN imagine a perpetual motion machine - they can keep the two ideas in their heads, and their ignorance stops them from ever getting stuck in a contradiction. Peirce might not respect these people much, but at least they are not lying. On the other hand, you admitted to knowing at least a bit about how machines operate, and therefore any "perpetual motion" and "machine" you imagine will ultimately contradict itself if you take the thought experiment seriously. So, YOU cannot imagine such a machine. Or, to be a bit more technical, given your definition of such a machine: You can imagine it, but not imagine it actually existing. What happens when we do that same test with the philosophical zombie? I assert that anyone** who takes the imagination experiment seriously will conclude that they cannot imagine the philosophical zombie actually existing. This is because I think 1) That "consciousness" is something you do and 2) that, whether or not they would say they agree with me if asked, most people go through their day in agreement with the implications of the prior point. I think that if these people took the imagination game seriously, they could not imagine an existing entity both "doing" and "not doing" consciousness at the same time. ** This is the weird general use of "anyone" that doesn't include literally anyone. More like: Any decently function, reasonably old person, with a fairly normal amount of social experience, etc., etc., etc. ----------- Eric P. Charles, Ph.D. Lab Manager Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20016 phone: (202) 885-3867 fax: (202) 885-1190 email: echar...@american.edu On Sun, Aug 24, 2014 at 3:30 PM, Eric Smith <desm...@santafe.edu> wrote: > > I guess the question boils down to how you respond to challenges about > philosophical zombies. These discussions normally begin with someone > asserting "You can imagine things that behave exactly like you and I in all > ways, but not conscious." The presenter then goes on to lay out a series of > riddles these creatures lead to. However, I am not sure I buy the premise. > > Thank you for saying this, Eric. > > I was reluctant to pick up this thread, because I haven't read Chalmers at > length and sympathetically. What I normally get is a version of the > statements above, followed with some kind of assertion that "it is > therefore logically possible that... exist" etc. > > I find such statements completely incomprehensible, and I am unable to > understand why anyone else thinks they have content (not that my finding > something incomprehensible is a significant observation). > > But, since people on this list have proved generous in having their time > wasted, let me try to explain why I am unable to distinguish any of this > from full nonsense. > > Let me hereby declare to the list that "I am able to imagine the existence > of perpetual motion machines" (First or second kind, your choice.) > > What is the status of that sentence? It has the virtue that the terms in > it actually have definitions, which means I can address the question what > its status is, something I cannot do for the foregoing statements about > consciousness. It takes a bit of unpacking, which I won't waste everyone's > time doing, but in the end, the notation of "perpetual motion machine" can > be resolved to mean a sequence of successive states of matter that the laws > of physics show do not exist as successive slices within any material > history. Said another way, a thing that is identified by not existing. > > What then does it mean that I am able to make a declarative statement > about imagining something for which the word, correctly resolved, has no > referent? I would say it means that the above sentence satisfies the basic > filters of English syntax. Good for it. Since when were the rules of > syntax believed to carry more than a first-line filter against > meaninglessness? > > Sentences in which the tokens -- marked as parts of speech by the > morphology we give them -- are consistent with the rules of syntax, and in > which the words themselves have not been given any reliable definition, do > not seem to me to carry any "logical" status at all. Hence I do not see > under what rule of "logic" it is "logically possible" that what I can > imagine "could exist", apart from the transformation rules of syntax. > > I don't mean, here, to refuse discussions that are carried out in > approximate terms; often they are the best we can do. My point is only > that, when one is as far into the fog as this topic is, and there is a > choice between assuming something magical, versus simply assuming that you > don't know what you are talking about and the rules of syntax don't provide > much help or protection, the latter seems to me more plausible. The > discussion of perpetual motion machines just provides an example where the > anal-retentive can dot the i's and cross the t's to verify that it is > indeed possible to make statements in which one does not know what one is > talking about. > > Eric > > > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >
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