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Article 6121 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: lights on, nobody home
Message-ID: <BILL.92Jun5154242@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu>
Date: 5 Jun 92 22:42:42 GMT
References: <5245@dsacg3.dsac.dla.mil> <BpDqqL.MMq@psych.toronto.edu>
	<BILL.92Jun5115711@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu>
	<1992Jun5.194207.16546@javelin.sim.es.com>
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In-Reply-To: biesel@javelin.sim.es.com's message of 5 Jun 92 19: 42:07 GMT

In article <1992Jun5.194207.16546@javelin.sim.es.com> 
biesel@javelin.sim.es.com (Heiner Biesel) writes:

   bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs) writes:

   >"If a thing is conscious, there must be somebody inside who is being
   >conscious?????"  

   >This is precisely the fallacy of the homunculus; but rarely does it
   >appear so blatantly.


   OK, Bill, you've convinced me.  [ . . . and some more sarcasm,
   apparently motivated by an impression that I was writing about the
   problem of Other Minds . . . ]

I was not trying to raise the problem of Other Minds; I was trying to
raise the problem of Infinite Regress.  The sentence I placed in
scarequotes denies the possibilility of analyzing a conscious entity
into nonconscious components.  It says (unless I am misreading it)
that when an entity is divisible into components, at least one of the
components must be conscious, or else the whole cannot be.  This is
the Principle of the Homunculus.  It is implicit in many arguments,
but is rarely stated explicitly.  (The phrase "nobody home" is
certainly a homuncular metaphor.)

	-- Bill


