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Article 3511 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Strong AI and Panpsychism
Keywords: panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Feb5.210050.22158@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: 5 Feb 92 21:00:50 GMT
References: <1992Feb2.192512.24293@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Feb4.044728.12324@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1992Feb5.183955.13789@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Lines: 23

In article <1992Feb5.183955.13789@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>
>It is also the case that we can have beliefs which have *no* behavioural
>implications.  Take the (admittedly contrived) following case:
>I have a belief that cats are actually extremely cleverly disguised
>visitors from Mars.  I *also* believe that the Wicked Witch of the
>West will turn me into a toad if I *act* like I believe cats are
>aliens.  Surely there is some difference between this case and the 
>case where I believe that cats are just cats, yet there would be no
>behavioural difference.  I can also have beliefs about events that
>happen in dreams, yet these have no (overt) behavioural consequences.

 I wonder if the two different possible beliefs about cats is any different
in principle from alternative representing the integer zero as a bitstring
of zero bits, or representing it as the null character string, as some
string processing languages do?


-- 
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  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940


