From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!noao!arizona!optima.UUCP Wed Feb  5 11:56:26 EST 1992
Article 3422 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!noao!arizona!optima.UUCP
>From: curtis@optima.UUCP (Curtis E. Dyreson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Intelligence Testing
Message-ID: <12187@optima.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: 3 Feb 92 03:03:58 GMT
References: <12184@optima.cs.arizona.edu>
Sender: curtis@cs.arizona.edu
Lines: 25

>From article <12184@optima.cs.arizona.edu>, by gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman):
> All I'm saying (sigh) is that you can't take behavior as a sign of
> consciousness without some argument for why the behavior should be
> taken as a sign of consciousness.

High Church Computationalism provides one such argument.  The lynchpin to
that argument, as you have correctly pointed out, is the assumption that 
"semantics follows syntax".  You reject this assumption.  It is too great
a leap of faith to assume that intentionality emerges from syntactic
manipulation.  Yours is a perfectly reasonable position.  

However, since you reject this assumption, is there any argument you are
willing to offer in its place that explains conciousness, why it exists,
and how it arises; in short, the nature of the beast?  It would be 
terrific if the theory you reveal provides the foundation for the 
scientific study of mind.  

You did give a nice recipe as to why you believe that other 
(human) minds are conscious (the defeatable inference from 
"no other reason to believe it ain't conscious" to "is conscious").  
Alas, that recipe offered little as a scientific theory of 
consciousness (nor did you intend it to be such), although it 
was a nice bit of folk psychology.

Curtis Dyreson


