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Article 3211 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Strong AI and Panpsychism
Summary: McCullough is not really a panpsychist
Keywords: panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Jan28.153645.5237@cs.yale.edu>
Date: 28 Jan 92 15:36:45 GMT
References: <1992Jan27.155128.5910@oracorp.com> <1992Jan28.004208.27238@psych.toronto.edu>
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I would like to plead for more standard use of terms in this argument
over "panpsychism."  As far as I can see, McCullough's position would
be better labeled as a species of behaviorism, the idea that there is
no real fact of the matter whether a system is conscious or not.  A
judgement whether something is conscious is a matter of esthetics or
whimsy.

Panpsychism is the position that every bit of matter has some sort of
primordial consciousness, and the brain simply concentrates it.
Brains are able to do this, and bricks are not, for reasons we don't
yet understand.

Note: panpsychism is exactly the opposite of McCullough's position,
because it is ultrarealist on the subject of consciousness, whereas
McCullough seems to think consciousness is just tomfoolery.

Panpsychism is attractive to AI people who are (a) realist about the
mind, (b) think the mind is unobservable, or directly observable only to
itself; (c) believe computation will account for everything
observable and nothing else.  They're left needing some way for the
mind to ride along on the computation, and panpsychism is one way.  I
think David Chalmers might defend this view.  McCullough is not a
panpsychist because he denies (a).  For what it's worth, I am not a
panpsychist because I accept (a) and (c) but not (b).

                                             -- Drew McDermott


