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Article 3062 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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t-drew
>From: mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Strong AI and panpsychism (was Re: Virtual Person?)
Summary: Stop the train!
Message-ID: <1992Jan23.183325.2773@cs.yale.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 18:33:25 GMT
References: <6025@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1992Jan22.213820.20784@cs.yale.edu> <1992Jan23.015152.510@psych.toronto.edu>
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  In article <1992Jan23.015152.510@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
  >In article <1992Jan22.213820.20784@cs.yale.edu> mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott) writes:
  >>
  >> If Strong AI is right, then
  >>rooms, abacuses, computers, pencils pushed by clerks, and the economy
  >>of Bolivia are all capable of sustaining computational processes that
  >>constitute minds.  
  >
  >But Drew, certainly believing that the Bolivian economy *could* be a mind 
  >is one of the most extraordinary consequences of the Strong AI position.

Yes, certainly, but...!

  >Since it is only the *functional* role that the material constituents play
  >that matters in producing a mind, literally *any* collection of matter
  >can be a mind.  

Let's stop this before it escalates into a nightmare of
misunderstanding.  Strong AI is the position that any collection of
matter can give rise to a mind *if it is capable of executing the right
program.*

   More to the point, with the enormous amount of matter in
  >the universe, and the practically infinite characteristics that we can
  >ascribe *formally*, there are minds *everywhere*.  

I doubt it.

   Who knows, under some
  >description, if Strong AI is correct, the molecules of air in the room
  >I'm in might, at least for a moment, constitute a mind.

Extremely unlikely, and similarly for the other possibilities you raised.

  >It is this panpsychism ... which makes me
  >*very* nervous.  

I deny the charge of panpsychism.

                                             -- Drew McDermott


