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Article 3739 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: orourke@unix1.cs.umass.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Virtual Person?
Message-ID: <43302@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 14 Feb 92 17:05:00 GMT
References: <1992Jan29.004822.23755@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Jan29.190105.25334@aisb.ed.ac.uk> <1992Jan30.001623.12556@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <6188@skye.ed.ac.uk>
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Reply-To: orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
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In article <6188@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>In article <1992Jan30.001623.12556@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>
>[fading qualia]
>
>>My point is simply that the fading case and sudden disappearance
>>cases seem to be quite implausible, though of course they're
>>possible.  This person with the half-silicon brain would be
>>conscious, but not nearly as conscious as they think they are?
>>It seems to me that the most natural assumption is that fading
>>and sudden disappearance are unreasonable.
>
>Why?  If you replace a person's neurons with neurons that don't
>work, what do you think would happen?

I agree with Jeff Dalton's questioning of David Chalmers' feeling
of implausibility here [hope I got who said what right]: fading 
consciousness and fading qualia seem quite natural to me.  We all 
experience periods of semiconsciousness, literally every day during 
hypnagoic reverie.  Fading qualia are less common, but certainly 
experience is sometimes especially acute, one sees colors as more vivid, 
etc.  This doesn't prove that qualia can fade, but I don't find it 
"quite implausible."
	For this reason I don't find much force in the argument 
contra Searle that depends on incremental replacement of neurons by 
silicon, and reference to the implausibility of fading consciousness.


