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Article 3791 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: orourke@unix1.cs.umass.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Virtual Person?
Message-ID: <43391@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 16 Feb 92 23:53:49 GMT
References: <1992Jan30.001623.12556@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <6188@skye.ed.ac.uk> <43302@dime.cs.umass.edu> <1992Feb16.185904.9343@psych.toronto.edu>
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Reply-To: orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
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In article <1992Feb16.185904.9343@psych.toronto.edu> michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar) writes:
>In article <43302@dime.cs.umass.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>>In article <6188@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>>In article <1992Jan30.001623.12556@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>>>
>>>[fading qualia]

I couldn't understand Michael Gemar's post, so rather than quote it, let
me summarize the history of this subsubthread as I understand it.

Long long ago, I asked if Searle had responded to the idea of replacing
neurons by functionally-equivalent silicon chips.  My point was that this
can be used as an intuition pump for the implications of Searle's position:
a functionally equivalent silicon brain does not "understand" etc.  David
Chalmers responded, yes, and in fact the intuition pump can itself be pumped
by imagining the silicon replacement neuron by neuron, which would
imply by Searle's position, that qualia would either have to fade or
switch off at some point, and either alternative is implausible.  Jeff Dalton
asked what's so implausible with fading qualia/consciousness?  And I
concurred:  David Chalmers pump of the pump does nothing for me.  If
functionally-equivalent silicon neurons don't have the mental magic
for some reason, one would expect the qualia to fade.


