From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!wupost!uunet!psinntp!scylla!daryl Fri Jan 31 10:26:47 EST 1992
Article 3244 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: daryl@oracorp.com
Subject: Re: Strong AI and Panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Jan29.031823.6624@oracorp.com>
Organization: ORA Corporation
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1992 03:18:23 GMT

Before I get into trouble on this topic, I wish to assure anyone who
cares that I am *not* presenting the pro-AI view. My beliefs about
consciousness are at odds with both the pro- and anti- AI views, and
to be frank, all I know about the pro-AI philosophical position is
what I have pieced together from anti-AI attempts at refutation
(Searle, Penrose, and various people on the net). So I speak only for
myself (as Drew McDermott and David Chalmers should be glad to hear).

Michael Gemar writes:

> However, I think that you point out one *very* good reason above to
> believe that consciousness is *not* merely descriptive, and that the
> moral consequences if it is.  If there is no fact of the matter
> whether something is conscious, then morality (or at least most
> versions of it) goes out the window.  Why should I treat *you* as
> conscious, if that is merely a "descriptive" term? And therefore, why
> should I treat you as any more worthy of ethical consideration than a
> rock, or a roomful of air, or a computer?

Beats me. Why should you treat someone you are in love with any
differently from someone you hate? Why should your reaction to a
beautiful piece of music be any different from your reaction to sheer
noise? I believe these are comparable questions. Your moral,
emotional, or ethical response to another person or object does not
depend solely on his, her or its causal properties. Why should it?

> I don't know how to have a nice conversation with a Chinese
> person, but I think that they are conscious.  I don't know how to
> converse with Martians, but if there were any (in the classical sense
> of course) I would think that they are conscious. Heck, I don't know
> how to talk with dolphins, but *they* might be conscious.

My using the phrase "have a conversation" was perhaps too sloppy. I
meant "communicate" in a broad sense. I know definitely that I can
communicate with Chinese people and with dolphins, and I suspect I
could communicate with Martians, if there were any.

> I guess the difference between us is that you seem to believe that
> ascriptions of consciousness are merely a matter of taste, not right or
> wrong, whereas I believe that there is a *fact of the matter* whether
> or not something is conscious - heck, I know that *I* am conscious,
> and that *that* is a *fact*, and not merely an ascription.

How do you feel about statements like "X is beautiful", or "X is
immoral", or "X is unjust"? I don't think it does justice to the
concepts of beauty, morality, and justice to say that they are
"matters of taste", but I still don't believe that they are causal
properties. As the old line goes, "The rain falls on the just and the
unjust" (or something like that). Nature doesn't care about justice,
*we* do, and we don't all agree on what justice is. That doesn't make
it a meaningless concept.

Similarly, I am not saying that attributions of consciousness are
unimportant or meaningless, but that they are not objective.

A science fiction writer, Roger Zelazny, wrote a short story, "The
Slow Kings" (I believe) that was about silicon-based life forms whose
natural sense of time was millions of times slower than ours. To
humans, they seemed like inanimate rocks, absolutely motionless. To
them, humans seemed like puffs of smoke, coming into existence and
fading quicker than it takes to acknowledge their presence. Both
humans and the silicon creatures viewed the other as not even alive,
let alone conscious.

(I'm not sure what the point of this story is, but it seemed relevant
when I started it. 8^)

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY







