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Article 3611 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Strong AI and panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Feb10.042237.4622@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 10 Feb 92 04:22:37 GMT
References: <1992Feb6.191559.12739@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Feb7.013657.9690@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Feb7.223611.5980@psych.toronto.edu>
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Organization: Indiana University
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In article <1992Feb7.223611.5980@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:

>And a Kalihari bushman might have the pretheoretical notion that
>a wind-up toy is more causally complex than a Cray (after all, the
>one moves and the other doesn't).  Why shouldn't we accept *this*
>intuition as equally valid?  If all we are going to do with our formal
>systems is confirm our intuitions, and reject systems which generate
>conclusions contrary to our intuitions *solely* because they
>are non-intuitive, then it seems to me that a lot of science is
>in trouble.  (Of course, it is possible that I am missing the
>point here.) 

It's just obvious that there is a real sense of causal organization
in which a brain has more complex organization than a simple clock.
To deny this, you'd have to be in the grip of an ideology.  It's this
notion of causal organization that's being formalized in the notion of
implementation of an FSA.  As with any formalization, if a first stab
at the definition of implementation doesn't capture the distinctions
that we want it to, then we try again.

>But my question is what principle a functionalist can use to 
>distinguish between virtual environment and entity.  

I don't see that any principle is needed.  Obviously, one will sometimes
want to construe the "virtual environment" as part of a larger system,
in which case one will draw the boundary widely.  When one wants to see
the virtual environment as being outside a smaller system, one draws the
boundary narrowly.  The choice is yours: there's no answer to the
question "which is the real boundary?".

-- 
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."


