On 2/17/08, Matt Mahoney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Nevertheless we can make similar reductions to absurdity with respect to > qualia, that which distinguishes you from a philosophical zombie. There is no > experiment to distinguish whether you actually experience redness when you see > a red object, or simply behave as if you do. Nor is there any aspect of this > behavior that could not (at least in theory) be simulated by a machine.
You are relying on a partial conceptual analysis of qualia or consciousness by Chalmers that maintains that there could be an exact physical duplicate of you that is not conscious (a philosophical zombie). While he is in general a great philosopher, I suspect his arguments here ultimately rely too much on moving from, "I can create a mental image of a physical duplicate and subtract my image of consciousness from it," to therefore, such things are possible. At any rate, a functionalist would not accept that analysis. On a functionalist account, consciousness would reduce to something like certain representational activities which could be understood in information processing terms. A physical duplicate of you would have the same information processing properties, hence the same consciousness properties. Once we understand the relevant properties it would be possible to test whether something is conscious or not by seeing what information it is or is not capable of processing. It is hard to test right now because we have at the moment only very incomplete conceptual analyses. ------------------------------------------- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&id_secret=96140713-a54b2b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
