From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!bronze!chalmers Wed Feb  5 11:56:41 EST 1992
Article 3445 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Multiple Personality Disorder and Strong AI
Keywords: consciousness,functionalism
Message-ID: <1992Feb4.043521.11469@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 4 Feb 92 04:35:21 GMT
References: <kokp5aINNiuu@agate.berkeley.edu> <1992Feb4.035646.11687@cs.yale.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
Lines: 23

In article <1992Feb4.035646.11687@cs.yale.edu> mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott) writes:

>The hard part is accepting that the quale of vivid green is
>really just an internal fiction.  You gradually come to accept it by
>realizing that (a) there's not going to be anything else in our
>universe that it could be;

Right: if materialism is true, then qualia can't exist.  What is it
they say: one person's modus ponens is another's modus tollens?

>(b) the inescapable feeling that my
>sensations *really do* have ineffable qualities is due to the fact
>that I can't get out of the story my brain is making up.

Right, so even my qualia-less zombie replica would *think* it had
qualia; at least it would *say* that it had qualia.  Alas for the
poor deluded creature!  But as for me, I don't just *think* that I
have qualia; I really do have qualia.  Trust me!

-- 
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."


