From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael Thu Feb 20 15:20:17 EST 1992
Article 3681 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Feb12.182033.4183@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <1992Feb10.042237.4622@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Feb10.164653.15748@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Feb11.223848.7203@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1992 18:20:33 GMT

In article <1992Feb11.223848.7203@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>In article <1992Feb10.164653.15748@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>
>>I have to disagree here.Whenever I see someone say "It's just obvious that..."
>>I worry about *them* being in the grip of an ideology.  What we are arguing
>>about are intuitions.  My point is that someone who is less tutored that
>>us might very well have different "intuitions", which makes "intuitions"
>>obviously contingent upon what we already know. My question is simply why 
>>we should we accept one *narrow* definition of states as the *right* one?
>>It seems to me that the only answer offered so far is that "Well, it just
>>feels right...".
>
>I think you're losing track of the logic of the discussion.  Formal
>definitions, such as that of an implementation of an FSA, are almost
>always invented to formalize certain intuitive notions that we
>want to capture, such as the intuitive distinction between the causal
>organizations of brains and clocks (and if you can't see that there's
>at least a very strong prima facie case that there's a distinction
>there to be captured, then there's not much I can do for you).

My point above was the perhaps not terribly profound one that the 
intuitions *you* have are based in large part on the rest of your
conceptual apparatus.  You suggest that "It is just obvious that..."
But, as your quote from Lewis in response to a posting on qualia
indicated, "obviousness" is not a good criterion for truth.

If I follow your argument correctly, your complaint about Putnam's
proof is that it assigns causal complexity to things which "obviously"
don't have it.  To be honest, I don't see why this is any more
(or less) problematic than assigning qualia to things which seem
obvious to me don't have them, such as atoms and thermostats.  I could
simply say (much as Searle does), "Well, the distinction I want to
draw is between people and thermostats, and if you can't see that there's
at least a very strong prima facie case that there's a distinction there
to be captured, then there's not much I can do for you."  I don't think,
however, that this line of attack is productive.  Instead, I am interested
in *why* one should rule out Putnam's states on *non-intuitive* grounds.
Your argument that his states don't capture counterfactuals is such
an argument.  Simply saying that they miss an "intuitive, obvious"
distinction is not
- michael





