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Article 3847 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Virtual Person?
Message-ID: <6204@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 18 Feb 92 22:46:04 GMT
References: <6188@skye.ed.ac.uk> <43302@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1992Feb16.224059.19893@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
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In article <1992Feb16.224059.19893@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>In article <43302@dime.cs.umass.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>
>>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."
>
>As I've said a number of times before, it's not fading qualia per se
>that are implausible; it's fading qualia accompanied by fixed
>functional organization (e.g. you still *say* you see bright red, 
>but you're really seeing tepid pink).  

But with artificial neurons replacing your real ones, you might not
go on saying anything.

You can't get by that without showing that functional organization
is all that's required for continued behavior despite a changing
physical basis.  That a program could be a brain simulation
(something Searle seems to be willing to accept, though Penrose
might not), would not show that actual neurons could be replaced.

In any case, I'm not sure what "fixed functional organization"
implies.  Suppose I turn the color intensity knob on the tv
camera in a robot.  Is that a change in functional organization?
It might produce tepid pink.  And if that's not a change in
functional organization, maybe other non-functional changes
(to artificial neurons, eg) would produce similar effects.

>I can e-mail you a copy of the old discussion if you like.

I would.  It would be difficult to find it again, and I'd like
to have a chance to think about it.

-- jeff


