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Article 3370 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Thermostats, consciousness and derived intentionality
Message-ID: <1992Feb1.223105.9850@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
References: <1992Jan31.184254.9068@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: Sat, 1 Feb 92 22:31:05 GMT
Lines: 24

In article <1992Jan31.184254.9068@cis.ohio-state.edu> chandra@cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran) writes:

>The example of thermostats has come up often in various related
>threads: For example, David Chalmers and Cameron Shelly think
>thermostats have *some* qualia.  I would like to argue that 
>information processing accounts are often *stances* that we take
>descriptively and do not inhere in the situation.  This has
>consequences to the argument about thermostats having qualia or
>whatever, without say mere rocks having them.

I agree and disagree with this.  I think that stances are very
relevant when it comes to explaining our ascriptions of
representational capacity to systems, or beliefs and desires, say.
But that doesn't work for qualia.  Qualia, it seems to me, are
entirely real things that aren't dependent on anyone's ascription.
I'm happy with the idea that representations are entities we ascribe
in order to make sense of various systems' behaviour, but not so
with qualia.  Qualia, unlike representations, aren't explanatory
constructs; rather, they are phenomena to be explained.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


