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Article 3374 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Multiple Personality Disorder and Strong AI
Message-ID: <1992Feb1.230449.11769@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
References: <kokp5aINNiuu@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: Sat, 1 Feb 92 23:04:49 GMT
Lines: 26

In article <kokp5aINNiuu@agate.berkeley.edu> jvsichi@ocf.berkeley.edu (John Sichi) writes:

>    Consider some neural network, composed of N nodes, which meets C$.
>Further, this network is sufficiently robust so that if any one the
>neural processing units and all of its connections are removed, C$
>continues to apply to the remaining N-1 nodes (perhaps with a slight
>change in the associated consciousness).
>
>    Here's the catch:  Even if the complete network is not subjected to
>such a lesion, any subnetwork of N-1 nodes meets C$ at the same time as
>the entire network does, meaning there should actually be N+1
>consciousnesses in existence!

This is a nice example, but compare: my house has N bricks in it.  Without
any one of the given bricks, it would still be a house.  Does this mean
that there are N+1 houses where I live?

This example might be slightly problematic for a dualist, but for
a materialist strong-AI believer who identifies consciousness with
a high-level property of organization, this isn't much different
from the case of the house.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


