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Article 3260 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and panpsychism (was Re: Virtual Person?)
Message-ID: <1992Jan29.193358.19320@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
References: <1992Jan26.174822.12526@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Jan29.001107.20084@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Jan29.164812.2514@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 92 19:33:58 GMT
Lines: 91

In article <1992Jan29.164812.2514@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:

>I would be interested in you spelling out what you see to be the
>consequences of this difference.  As I interpret it, "belief" requires
>consciousness, and conscious experience would at least imply some
>beliefs.

Both these implications are questionable.  We all know about unconscious
beliefs, for instance.  Searle has tried to argue ("Consciousness,
explanatory inversion, and cognitive science", BBS 13:585-642, 1990) that
all belief must be at least potentially conscious, but most of the
peer commentators seemed to disagree.  The second implication (the one
that matters for my purposes) is more straightforwardly false -- we have
all kinds of conscious states, such as pains, that don't have to involve
belief in any essential way.

>I would be *very* interested in a framework of an explanation at how
>information processing produces qualia, since this would be a solution
>to a problem for which even Fodor admits Functionalism has no answer.
>As far as I can see, there could easily be information processing
>without qualia.  Do you have an argument, or is this merely an act
>of faith?

I'm not a functionalist in the usual sense about qualia, as it seems
conceptually coherent to me that one could have any functional
organization you like without qualia, from which it follows that
the fact of the existence of qualia must be a further fact over
and above the existence of that functional organization.  On the
other hand, I believe that qualia *arise* from functional
organization; however, this supervenience relation is contingent
(nomically necessary, to be precise) rather than conceptually
or metaphysically necessary.

I've already given what amounts to an argument for this supervenience
relation in my "fading qualia" argument.  I've got other arguments,
but don't particularly want to get into another huge discussion
right now, though I could refer you to my Ph.D. thesis.  Incidentally
I don't claim to understand this supervenience relation; I think that
qualia are a huge mystery, just about the biggest mystery in the
universe.  But like most others I believe that they arise from the
physical; all I've tried to do in the arguments referred to is
to constrain the kinds of physical properties on which they depend.

>Well, if saying that thermostats are conscious doesn't render the notion
>empty, I don't know what does...

That's silly.  The claim that thermostats have qualia is certainly
a substantial claim, not an empty claim.  It's just saying that
qualia are more widespread than we might have thought.

>But seriously, would you also accept that rocks have consciousness?  
>After all, they behave similarly to a thermostat - if the temperature
>goes up, they change state (expand), if the temperature goes down,
>they change to a different state (contract), and if the temperature
>stays the same, then they stay in the same state.  Note that, at the 
>very least, this is what the main "information processing" component of
>the thermostat does (usually a bimetallic strip).  If this is the case,
>then *every* hunk of matter is *at least* as "conscious" as a thermostat, 
>and has *at least* the same "information processing" capacity.   Now
>we *definitely* have panpsychism!

Insofar as there are information-processing systems within rocks, then
those systems have (very limited) qualia.  I wouldn't put the point
by saying that rocks have qualia, as rocks (unlike thermostats) are not
individuated as information-processing systems.

>Well, David, I think you win the Panpsychism Award.  Honestly, I don't see
>how this notion leaves us with any utility for mental terms.  I would be
>interested in reading your view on this. 

I don't think the second sentence follows at all.  For a start, most
mental terms (belief, desire, knowledge, even perception) don't
necessarily involve qualia in an essential way -- look for instance
at modern cognitive science, which studies all these things while
practically ignoring qualia.  Furthermore, the qualia possessed
by thermostats are so utterly different in degree from ours as to
be in quite a different class.  These trivial qualia don't qualify
as a "mind" in many of the senses in which that word is used, which
is why I don't use the term "panpsychism" for my view as a rule.

If you want a reference, check out my paper "Consciousness and
cognition", which is available by ftp from cogsci.indiana.edu in
the compressed Postscript file pub/chalmers.consciousness.ps.Z.
This is a couple of years old now, and I think that the last
section (which discusses this issue) is unsatisfactory, but it
will give you some idea.

-- 
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."


