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Article 4533 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: aliens eat fading qualia
Message-ID: <1992Mar18.040103.15232@news.media.mit.edu>
Date: 18 Mar 92 04:01:03 GMT
References: <1992Mar6.185522.18137@oracorp.com> <1992Mar17.044749.20941@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <6416@skye.ed.ac.uk>
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Cc: minsky

In article <6416@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>In article <1992Mar17.044749.20941@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>
>>I agree that fading qualia are conceivable.  My argument was that
>>fading qualia with preserved functional organization are empirically
>>unlikely.
>
>Suppose you replace neurons by broken ones so that after all
>the neurons have been replaced the person is not conscious.
>The either consciousness blinks out or it fades.  Well, I think 
>it's more likely that it does a little of both.  But would anyone
>seriously make an argument that none of these are plausible?
>
>So what's different about the "fading qualia" argument?  Only
>that functional organization is maintained.  Supposedly, this is
>enough for continuity of behavior.  And if we take the functional
>organization to be something a computer could get merely by running
>the right program, then there might be some relevance to Searle's
>arguments.

"This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire
civilized world.  Your message will cost the net hundreds if not
thousands of dollars to send everywhere.  Please be sure you know what
you are doing."

Well of course I'm sure.  But back to business.  I agree with Chalmers
that fading qualia with intact function seems implausible.  And if
this repeats an earlier argument, I apologize to those thousands of
machines in the civilized world.  For, let's suppose that Jeff's
neurons are steadily being replaced by functionally (but not
qualia-tatively) equal ones, so that he continues to produce the same
philosophical arguments, no matter that his consciousness
(qualia/subjectivity/etc) are gradually fading.  Are we to believe that his
discussions and argunments vis-a-vis those qualia will remain
unattenuated?  That he would remain as pro-qualia as ever?  Surely
not, because we know from his participation here that he is an
honorable person and would never lie about having full-fledged qualia
if he did not indeed enjoy those pleasures.  Or does functionality not
involve any 'insight' at all.  Surely that could not be, or we would
never have heard about those qualia in the ffirst place.


