From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael Wed Feb  5 11:57:00 EST 1992
Article 3478 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael
>From: michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Feb4.212836.5875@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <1992Jan31.193524.28969@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Jan31.233453.7625@news.media.mit.edu> <1992Feb3.113723.2519@arizona.edu>
Distribution: world,local
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1992 21:28:36 GMT

In article <1992Feb3.113723.2519@arizona.edu> bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs) writes:

>  Consider an arbitrary rock, and an arbitrary finite state
>automaton.  There exists a mapping from vibrational states
>of the rock to states of the FSA which preserves the state
>transition function of the FSA.  (The mapping is probably
>time-dependent, but so what?)  Under this mapping, the rock
>is performing the same computation as the FSA.
>
>  Therefore, if an FSA can be conscious, and consciousness is
>merely a matter of performing the right sort of computation,
>then a rock can be conscious.
>
>  What's wrong with this reasoning?
>
>	-- Bill

Well, how about the Functionalist premise? :-) This is *exactly* the
point (well, *close* to exactly) that I was trying to make in the 
original article of this thread.  If we accept functionalism, then
heck, rocks (at least "sufficiently complex" ones, if your an
emergentist functionalist) have conscious experience.  Of course, some
folks are happy with this...

No doubt there will be some objection raised that the state-transitions
which happen in the rock must be *causally* related, and that
time-dependent mappings are not allowable.  Like you, I would want to
see a *principled* reason why such things are not "real" state-transitions.

- michael


