From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wupost!uunet!psinntp!scylla!daryl Tue Jan 28 12:18:09 EST 1992
Article 3175 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: daryl@oracorp.com
Subject: Re: Strong AI and Panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Jan27.155128.5910@oracorp.com>
Organization: ORA Corporation
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1992 15:51:28 GMT

(In response to Michael Gemar's accusing Strong AI of panpsychism):
 
Michael, I want to be the first pro-AI poster to comp.ai.philosophy to
accept your charges of panpsychism. I think that you are right, that it
is a consequence of Strong AI, even if most pro-AI people don't like to
admit it.

If you will forgive me for spouting off an impromptu essay, I would
like to distinguish between two kinds of properties: descriptive and
what, for lack of a better word, I will call causal. A descriptive
property is a property that, in some sense, is made up by human beings
to help classify our observations of the world---for example, calling
a painting beautiful, or calling a creature bird-like. Descriptive
properties simply summarize observed properties of an object.

On the other hand, causal properties have consequences above and
beyond the observations that led us to attribute those properties. If
we see a clear liquid, and, after tasting it, say "Oh, this is water",
calling it water doesn't simply *mean* that it is clear and has a
certain taste. The fact that the liquid is water has consequences
beyond these, such as quenching fires, decomposing into hydrogen and
oxygen, and causing metallic sodium to burst into flame.

The difference between these two kind of properties is that, nature
doesn't care about descriptive properties, but does care about causal
properties. The laws of nature treat beautiful and ugly paintings
exactly the same, but treat water and, say, alcohol very differently.
If someone is convinced of the truth of panpulchritude (the belief
that everything is beautiful, in its own way), absolutely nothing
follows from such a belief. On the other hand, if someone believes
that everything is made of water, that belief has consequences, and is
easily proven false.

If I have convinced you that there is a meaningful difference between
these two kinds of properties, then the obvious next question is
whether consciousness (or understanding, or intelligence, or whatever)
is a purely descriptive property, or whether it is a causal property.
For the people who say "We haven't learned enough about consciousness
to know whether a machine can be conscious", it is a causal property.
There may be both pro- and anti- AI people who believe that it is a
causal property, but I do not. I think it is merely a descriptive
property, with no causal consequences. I may believe that "A machine
that can pass the Turing Test must be conscious", but I don't believe
that anything follows from a machine being conscious that doesn't also
follow from the fact that it can pass the Turing Test.

How does this relate to the original question of panpsychism? Well, it
may be true that panpsychism, the belief that tornadoes and nations'
economies and thermostats are all conscious, but so what? There is no
more consequences to such a statement than there is to a statement
like "Andy Warhol's paintings are all much more beautiful than Van
Gogh's, only people haven't realized it yet". Descriptive properties
have no causal force other than indirectly, through people's *belief*
that they hold. So there is no causal force to the statement "this
being (machine or person) is conscious", and neither is there any
causal force to the statement "this machine is not conscious". There
is causal force to a statement like "David Gudeman believes that this
being is conscious". (I'm singling out David Gudeman because he has
pointed out that our morality might demand that we treat conscious
beings in a certain way.)

My response to a claim that a thermostat, or a tornado is conscious is
"Tell me something interesting". If I don't know how to have a nice
conversation with a tornado, I don't care whether it is conscious or
not; I'm not going to treat it as conscious. And if someone tells me
how I can have a nice conversation with a tornado, I still won't care
whether it is *really* conscious, I will go ahead and try to strike up
a conversation.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY






