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Article 3074 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 (was Re: Virtual Person?)
Message-ID: <1992Jan23.214130.27931@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 23 Jan 92 21:41:30 GMT
References: <6025@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1992Jan22.213820.20784@cs.yale.edu> <1992Jan23.015152.510@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
Lines: 45

In article <1992Jan23.015152.510@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:

>But Drew, certainly believing that the Bolivian economy *could* be a mind 
>is one of the most extraordinary consequences of the Strong AI position.
>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.  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*.  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.  Perhaps if the
>amount of cash in every cash register in the world were taken as activation
>levels in a network, the world economy would have a mind.  Maybe, by
>converting gravitational attraction into electrical current, we could see
>that all the stars in the galaxy constitute a mind.  

Strong AI predicts that *if* the functional organization is right, then
the system will have a mind.  But given the enormous complexity of this
functional organization, the probability that such functional organization
could be realized by chance is miniscule.  Extremely miniscule.  If such
systems ever exist in practice, they will almost certainly be the product 
of conscious design, or a quasi-teleological process like natural
selection.  On the other hand, *if* this miniscule chance came through
and the world economy instantiated the right organization (or *if* enough
rich and powerful AI-scientists-turned-bankers marshalled their clout
for a day and forced the economy into just the right pattern), then yes,
a mind would arise as a consequence.

>It is this panpsychism which functionalism seems to imply which makes me
>*very* nervous.  I will agree that the above is not a *logical* argument
>against Strong AI, but it certainly should cause its advocates to pause and
>consider to what, at root, their position commits them (the ethical problems
>alone boggle the mind!).

This is far short of panpsychism, due to the rarity of systems that realize
such complex organization.

On the other hand, I don't think that panpsychism is so unreasonable.  I
think it's quite likely that thermostats have conscious states, if only
of a very limited kind.

-- 
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."


