From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!ucbvax!ZIMMER.CSUFRESNO.EDU!rhorowit Tue Jun  9 10:06:50 EDT 1992
Article 6071 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rhorowit@ZIMMER.CSUFRESNO.EDU (Rick Horowitz)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Cartesian Theater & You (here)
Message-ID: <9206032321.AA05321@CSUFresno.EDU>
Date: 3 Jun 92 23:21:13 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 52


Caveat: Undergrad philosophy student

It seems that everyone is busy trying to eliminate, in
one way or another, some Cartesian view of the mind/brain.
However, at the same time, it doesn't seem like you (and
I mean ALL of you) can do this; you all seem to be--"deep
down"--Cartesians.  

>Just assume for now that most people felt this way.  The purpose of the
>TT and TTT might then be to identify AI entities that _feel_ as if they
								    ^^^^
>are something that possesses consciousness, that someone is home, the

Excuse me?  Could you explain in what sense "they" could feel anything
about "themselves" without having this same difficulty with an apparent
           ^^^^^^
Cartesianism? 

What would be wrong with some kind of emergentism, in which the mind
("looking" something like a Cartesian ego sitting back in the third
or fourth row, watching the show put on by "its" inputs) was 
ineliminable?  Does "wetness" cease to exist when we've shown that
it's only some emergent property of a certain (sufficiently massive)
collocation of "water" molecules?  Just because we can make a 
distinction between an appearance and some underlying "reality", 
does this mean the appearance is "not-real"?  

Appearances definitely seem to be real--at least as real as the
computer I'm "writing" this on, or the table that holds up that
computer.  But, wait, the computer is, after all, only a collocation
of some molecules, and the table?--ditto.  Does this mean the
computer isn't real? the table isn't real?  Just because I might
(want to) say "Something resembling a Cartesian ego sitting in the
third or fourth row of the theater of my mind turns out to be 
[fill in this spot with whatever we decide it turns out to be]"--
does this mean it isn't real?  If I explain that my computer is,
after all, just a collection of molecules of this or that type
(whatever THAT means), have I explained away my computer?  Have I
"reduced" my computer to non-computerness?

What I'd like to know is---and I know your lights are on---if
there really ain't nobody home, how can I (who is home!) ever
expect a response to the above???  (Oh, woe is _________ ME, I guess.)


||======================================================================||
||  Rick Horowitz                  || If a tree falls across the road   ||
||  CSUFresno, Philosophy          || and no one is there trying to     ||
||  rick@csufres.csufresno.edu     || pass, does it block the road?     ||
||  rhorowit@zimmer.csufresno.edu  ||          -Nick Serafimidis        ||
||======================================================================||


