From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wupost!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aisb!jeff Fri Jan 31 10:27:02 EST 1992
Article 3270 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wupost!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aisb!jeff
>From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Strong AI and panpsychism (was Re: Virtual Person?)
Message-ID: <1992Jan29.182654.25060@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 29 Jan 92 18:26:54 GMT
References: <1992Jan23.214130.27931@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Jan26.174822.12526@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Jan29.001107.20084@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Sender: news@aisb.ed.ac.uk (Network News Administrator)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 36

In article <1992Jan29.001107.20084@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:

>I'm starting from a strong realist position about consciousness, 
>taking it to refer to the really mysterious part of the mind -- the
>subjectivity, the "what it is like to be", in Nagel's phrase -- and
>then saying that it may well turn out that surprisingly and
>counterintuitively, even thermostats possess this to a very limited
>extent.  

I think we'd need something a bit stronger than counterintuitive
if this turned out the be the case.  Though you say you mean
consciousness in the string sense, it's hard for me to see how
this can be so.  I'm pretty much forced to the conclusion that
you understand something different by "consciousness" and "qualia"
than I do.

The only alternative I can see is to regard the idea of "consciousness
to a very limited extent" as true only in a very technical sense, where
using the word "consciousness" for both thermostats and the human
case was more or less like saying a few photons in a dark room was
the same as having the light on (but to a very limited extent).

BTW, perhaps the extent is so limited that it isn't like anything
to be a thermostat.

>I think that wherever there is information processing, there are qualia

This doesn't really explain.  Why do you think there's information
precessing in thermostats?  Because they have states and are affected
by heat, so that the "information" has something to do with how much
heat there is?  If it's anything like that, then I don't see how you
can avoid saying that atoms have qualia, because a photon comes along,
is absorbed, an electron goes to a higher energy level, etc.  So
atoms are processing this photon-information.

-- jd


