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Article 3263 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: daryl@oracorp.com
Subject: Re: Strong AI and Panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Jan29.195432.25839@oracorp.com>
Organization: ORA Corporation
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1992 19:54:32 GMT

Drew McDermott writes:

> 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.

I apologize for misusing the word "panpsychism". I interpreted it to
mean the belief that just about anything can as legitimately be
considered conscious as humans can. If you are going to get fussy
about terms, I thought that behaviorism was the belief that internal
states (desires, fears, etc.) had no explanatory power for human
behavior. I believe that behaviorism in this sense is clearly false.

Anyway, I didn't mean to say that everything about consciousness,
understanding, etc. was a matter of esthetics. There is certainly an
objective component to conscious behavior, such as the ability to plan
for the future, reason, etc. However, the criterion by which
individual people decide to consider systems with these
characteristics to be "really" conscious seems pretty subjective to
me. In analogy, the temperature of the air in the room may be an
objective fact, but the notion that the room is "uncomfortably hot" is
not objective. The drawing of lines is what I consider subjective.

For some, it is obvious that a computer program cannot be
conscious, to others, it is obvious that a computer program without
sensor and actuators cannot be conscious. To still others, it is
obvious that a table lookup program cannot be conscious. There is no
way to identify which of these attitudes is "correct" without a common
meaning of "consciousness", and I think the common core of meaning for
this word that we all share doesn't cover the case of machine
consciousness.

> 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.

Phrased this way, it seems that panpsychism implies that consciousness
is something like a substance, which I certainly would reject. I also
would reject the implication that we don't know why a brick is less
conscious than a human brain. Does panpsychism really entail these
conclusions?

> 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.

I don't see how you can say that panpsychism is "exactly the
opposite". My claim is that there is no way to objectively partition
the world into "clearly conscious" and "clearly not conscious" pieces
except the trivial partitions (everything is conscious, or nothing is
conscious). The panpsychic limits the possibilities further, to simply
"everything is conscious". That seems to refine, not contradict, my
belief.

And I don't believe that consciousness is "just tomfoolery". To
believe that no objective line can be drawn between the conscious and
the unconscious is not to dismiss the subject as tomfoolery. We are
forced to make choices without clear objective criteria all the time,
but often an arbitrary decision is better than no decision at all.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY


