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Article 3350 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and Panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Jan31.231006.7248@news.media.mit.edu>
Keywords: panpsychism
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Cc: minsky
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
References: <1992Jan28.164410.9509@psych.toronto.edu> <21879@life.ai.mit.edu> <1992Jan31.163659.11670@javelin.sim.es.com>
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1992 23:10:06 GMT
Lines: 54

In article <1992Jan31.163659.11670@javelin.sim.es.com> biesel@javelin.sim.es.com (Heiner Biesel) writes:
>minsky@transit.ai.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:
>
>...stuff about belief deleted...
>
>>[stuff deleted]   
      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.
>
>True. However, "consciousness" is, for most human beings at least, the 
>defining property of their own existence, and hence irremediably tied up with
>their notion of mind. One can conceive of a "mind" capable of any of the
>activities we are usually so proud of: logical analysis, poetry, whimsy,
>dirty jokes, campaign rhetoric..., all without being "conscious". I, and
>presumably Minsky, would consider an artificial construct capable of these
>feats a "mind". Is it an interesting "mind", simply because it passes the
>Turing test? Does it contain the experience of "I", rather than simply the 
>concept?
> [religious hypothesis deleted]

Ah, that's my point.  Perhaps *you* can conceive of a "mind" capable
of any of the activities we are usually so proud of --- without being
"conscious"  -- but I can't or, at least, I've trained myself not to.
This is because I'm developing that hypothesis mentioned above, that
the phenomena we call consciousness are caused by parts of the mind
accessing partial records (that is, condensed traces) of the recent states
of other parts.  Now, *I* can't conceive of a mechanism being able to
do the sorts of things you mentioned -- logical analysis, poetry,
whimsy, -- all without (where you said "being "conscious") being able
to use recent records of its activity.  Otherwise it would only replay
stored scripts, or get into horrible loops, or run in a completely
"situation-driven" manner.  

The difference between our views is that you seem to be thinking of
consciousness as a functionless adornment, whereas I'm saying that it
comes from a complex of mechanisms that seem useful and, er, causal.

Returning to the "panpsychism" thread, this could be applied to
appropriate degrees to any mechanism (or part of any larger mechanism)
to the extent that it makes (useful) applications of memories of its
earlier states.  This, of course, might mean that the use of the
current term "conscious" would not be of much value until we attach to
it a functional grammar of more specific terminologies.  Otherwise you
get into silly questions like "are viruses alive" which come from not
having a more sophisticated descriptive language for the variously
possible sorts of "adaptive? metabolizing? reproductive"
self-preserving? mechanisms."



