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Article 3667 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Functionalist Theory of Qualia
Message-ID: <1992Feb12.073418.10497@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
References: <1992Feb6.055620.23808@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <jbaxter.697533284@adelphi> <1992Feb10.192310.2777@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 07:34:18 GMT
Lines: 36

In article <1992Feb10.192310.2777@aisb.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

>He has?  Where?  The argument I get from him is that if I say there
>aren't qualia in such things I must be suffering from a failure of
>the imagination.  That may be an argument, but it's not a very
>convincing one.

You're imagining things (insert smiley here).  I've certainly never
claimed to have a knockdown argument that thermostats have qualia.
I've only offered two sketchy plausibility arguments.  The only people
I'd accuse of failure of imagination are those who say "but they couldn't
*possibly*", without accompanying argument.

>From an objective standpoint, the status of thermostat qualia has to be
regarded as an interesting open question.  Most people find the claim
counter-intuitive, but there are surprisingly few good arguments to
back that feeling up.  In the absence of such good arguments, the
considerations I've mentioned lead me to the conclusion that
thermostats might actually have qualia, at least as an interesting
working hypothesis.

>>David seems to see qualia wherever there is "information processing
>>of the right kind".
>
>_That_ may well be reasonable, but his notion of "the right kind"
>has it occuring in thermostats.

"Most people find the claim that not-P completely obvious and
when I assert P they give me an incredulous stare.  But the fact
that they find not-P obvious is no argument that it is true; and I
do not know how to refute an incredulous stare."  --David Lewis.

-- 
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."


