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Article 3391 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and Panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Feb2.053646.625@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Keywords: panpsychism
Organization: Indiana University
References: <1992Jan31.190338.25107@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Feb1.224845.10781@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Feb2.000933.29482@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Sun, 2 Feb 92 05:36:46 GMT
Lines: 49

In article <1992Feb2.000933.29482@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:

>What makes a state "mental"?  If my blood sugar goes up, I get sleepy.  The
>change in blood sugar is a change in state which causes a behavioural change.
>Why isn't it a "mental" state?   If the mind is the entity that's responsible
>for producing behaviour, then why isn't *any* change in state that
>produces behaviour a change in "mental" state?  My naive answer to this
>is that it is because mental states have a special quality, namely their
>phenomenal, or at least (in the case of unconscious states, at least
>*potentially* phenomenal) component.  Otherwise, it hard for me to see how
>we can distinguish between mental states and other kinds of causes of
>behaviour.

Well, there are different ways in which states can cause behaviour, and
only some of them are mental.  The question of how to characterize the
difference is a very tricky one, and the whole field of action theory
in philosophy is essentially devoted to this question, but the
phenomenal/nonphenomenal distinction isn't the only or even the best
way of doing this.  A recent book on the subject is Dretske's _Explaining
Behavior: Reasons in a World of Causes_; like most other books on the
topic, it goes on and on about characterizing mental states without
even raising the problem of phenomenal states.

One way of characterizing causal states as mental is that there must
be some rational link between the state and the action, though that's
far short of a complete account, and only works for some states.

>But certainly it is only a belief if it *in principle* could be conscious.
>The notion of "believing" things that we can't *in principle* know we
>believe seems ludicrous.  This is not to say that there can't be unconscious
>beliefs, but only that *any* such belief must, under other circumstances,
>have a conscious component.  This requirement makes belief dependent upon
>phenomenal experience, even if any particular belief is not conscious.

Searle argued just this in his 1990 BBS paper "Consciousness, explanatory
inversion, and cognitive science".  Most of the commentators seemed to
disagree.  In practice, it seems to me that just about any belief will
be consciously accessible in principle, but I see no reason why that
has to be so.

e.g. imagine that world where God created a universe physically identical
to ours, but with no phenomenal states.  We'd probably say that our twins
in that world had no sensations, and maybe no pains, but I think they
would nevertheless have beliefs.

-- 
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."


