From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael Fri Jan 31 10:27:26 EST 1992
Article 3310 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael
>From: michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and Panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Jan30.204029.27574@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <1992Jan29.170943.4706@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Jan29.210141.26133@cs.yale.edu> <1992Jan29.214150.1709@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1992 20:40:29 GMT

This is getting awfully interesting...

In article <1992Jan29.214150.1709@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>In article <1992Jan29.210141.26133@cs.yale.edu> mcdermott-drew@CS.YALE.EDU (Drew McDermott) writes:
>
[some earlier exchange deleted, in which Dave claims to be a "reluctant
 dualist"]

>I'd be very happy to be proven wrong about this, and to be shown
>how materialism could provide an explanation of consciousness,
>but I've thought about this for a long, long time, with all my
>prior sympathies lying in the materialist direction, and I
>simply don't see how it's possible.

I think I agree, although also reluctantly.  I don't think that
functionalism explains consciousness, and I don't that Searle's
"causal powers" do either.  It looks like we're stuck...

>>Functionalists, including me, refuse to take this easy way out.  I am
>>willing to bet that all the future "aspects" of matter that we
>>discover will resemble the aspects we now know about, in that they
>>will be governed entirely by indifferent mechanical laws.
>
>I agree with this, which is why I think that if straightforward
>functionalism is false, some kind of dualism must be true.
>
>>That's why
>>I think we should insist that cognitive science propose and evaluate
>>models of mind using mundane mechanisms.
>
>I agree with this too, but I don't think that the problem of 
>consciousness is strictly in the domain of cognitive science.
>Cognitive science is all about explaining human action, and it
>seems to me that that can be done without invoking phenomenal
>consciousness.

This seems to be a type of behaviourist version of cognitive science.
I don't mean to invoke "behaviourism" as a dirty word, but my
view of cognitive science has always been that it was the study of the
*mind*, and not of behaviour.  I would include phenomenal consciousness
as an aspect of the mind.  If this isn't the case, why do AI types *care*
whether the computer "actually" understands, as long as it *acts* like
it does.  Surely understanding is in part phenomenal.   

>>Hence we cannot postpone the ethical horror show into the
>>indefinite future when all problems will gently fade away into a mist
>>of appreciation for the transcendent qualities of matter properly
>>understood.
>
>And I even agree with this.  I can't see how a theory of
>phenomenal consciousness is going to help our ethics any.  For
>the purposes of ethical theory, materialism might as well be
>true.

Here I would violently disagree, at least if I understand you.  All of
utilitarianism is based on the importance of phenomenal experience.  
All of ethics proper is based on the notion of free will and choice
(else there would be no ethical *decisions*, and so no ethics).  If
materialism *is* true, and all of behaviour is completely predictable
from material interaction, then no such decision process can exist.
This is, of course, old stuff.

- michael



