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Article 3325 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: minsky@transit.ai.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Strong AI and Panpsychism
Keywords: panpsychism
Message-ID: <21879@life.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 31 Jan 92 05:46:37 GMT
References: <1992Jan28.004208.27238@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Jan28.153645.5237@cs.yale.edu> <1992Jan28.164410.9509@psych.toronto.edu>
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In article <1992Jan28.164410.9509@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:

>When people say "I *think* consciousness is just tomfoolery" I begin to
>wonder if they aren't simply being slying ironic.  Either that or completely
>confused about the meaning of terms.  Minsky is reputed to have said
>"I don't believe in belief." (I suppose, since he posts here, he can confirm
>whether this is true.)  Such statements I find completely incoherent.

>- michael

Yes, because of being several times removed from their contexts.  What
I've said about "belief" in a philosophical context was that the idea
that "Jack believes X" is not a reasonable thing to discuss formally.
(For example, in the context of "believes" vs. "knows".) Simply
because the human mind is not a simple data-base plus processor, or
axiom-set plus -rule(s) of inference.  Instead, the situation normally
is much more complex, one part of your mind (one ensemble of agencies)
maintaining one assumption, justification, protected-goal, etc., while
other parts are denying , rejecting, suppressing, opposing, etc.
corresponding positions.  Thus you can love/dislike, etc.  There isn't
simply a person/homunculus inside your head, but a big
self-conflicting organization.

As for "consciousness" the situation is worse.  There are lots of
mental phenomena sometimes called by that name, but so far as I can
see, what they mostly share in common is
_short_term_memories_about_recent_mental_states.  I don't believe that
we are in any deep sense "self-aware"; we have virtually no sense of
where our words come from, or how we walk, or how we see, etc.  We do
remember that we recently smiled, etc., and this is very useful.  It
keeps you, for example, from getting into wastefully repetitive loops.
But "reflective" short term memories -- records of recent mental
states that can be used as uinputs to other processes -- have many
other uses, and (surely) many different mechanisms with different
evolutionary histories and functions.  So as far as I'm concerned, it
is the use of this word, as though it represents anything important,
e.g., some irreducible attribute of mind -- that has kept philosophy,
since the time of Kant, from contributing important insights to
psychology.



