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Article 3276 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: <1992Jan29.235810.11317@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
References: <1992Jan26.174822.12526@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Jan29.001107.20084@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Jan29.182654.25060@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 92 23:58:10 GMT
Lines: 56

In article <1992Jan29.182654.25060@aisb.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

>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.

I'm talking about "qualia" in precisely the usual sense -- a
phenomenology, a raw feel, a "something it is like to be".
"Consciousness" is a more complex term, having some connotations
of intelligence and complex cognitive processes.  In my writing
on this I've spelt out the distinction into "psychological
consciousness" and "phenomenal consciousness"; but phenomenal
consciousness is the key sense, and this comes to about the
same thing as qualia.  I have to emphasize that there is *no*
bait-and-switch going on when I say that I think thermostats
have qualia; it's amazing how many people think that this must
be some kind of reductive claim about qualia.

>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).

Thermostat qualia are far, far simpler than human qualia, and are
unlike them in many important senses.  But they are still qualia.

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

Having "something it is like to be" is just what I *mean* by 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.

I'm not explaining anything (here), just making a claim.  But note that
(1) I'm not talking about information in the Dretske/Barwise sense,
involving a semantic correlation with environmental properties, but
in something much more like the Shannon/Weaver sense, with distinctions
pushing distinctions around (I think it was Bateson who said "information
is a difference that makes a difference"); and (2) yes, insofar as
atoms have information-processing subsystems of the kind you describe,
then there are qualia associated with atoms.

-- 
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."


