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Article 3687 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: <1992Feb12.224832.305@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 12 Feb 92 22:48:32 GMT
References: <1992Feb10.164653.15748@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Feb11.223848.7203@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Feb12.182033.4183@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
Lines: 41

In article <1992Feb12.182033.4183@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:

>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.

There's a huge difference here, which is that when it comes to the
question of the existence of thermostat qualia, we're not in possession
of all the relevant facts.  All we know about the thermostat are the
physical facts, but the facts about qualia go beyond the physical facts
(given that one isn't reductionist about qualia).  So the question of
thermostat qualia is an open question, though it's reasonable to make
plausibility arguments either way.

Contrast the case of the simple clock, in which we are in possession
of all the relevant facts.  We know how the clock works, its physical
constitution, and so on.  Relative to those facts, the question of
whether the clock has a certain causal organization is a *conceptual*
question.  In this case it's reasonable to say that the very concept
of causal organization rules out the clock having the same causal
organization as the brain.  The dispute here can only be about
how we use certain concepts, whereas the dispute over thermostats
has real empirical content.

>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

As I've said a number of times, the question here is the adequacy of a
definition, and the adequacy of a definition depends on how well it
captures the pre-existing notion that it was meant to capture.  There's
no point in going over this again: I've made it as clear as I can.

-- 
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."


