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Article 4103 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Strong AI and panpsychism
Message-ID: <1992Feb27.232723.16896@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 27 Feb 92 23:27:23 GMT
References: <1992Feb20.170044.24181@oracorp.com>
Organization: Indiana University
Lines: 31

In article <1992Feb20.170044.24181@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com writes:

>>>hoc. My question was why does it matter; if there exists *any* mapping
>>>(however strange) between physical states and mental states, then why
>>>can't the physical object be said to *possess* those mental states?
>
>>Well, there's a mapping from the 600 mental states I've had in the
>>last 10 minutes to the 600 books in my bookshelf, so obviously a
>>mapping alone isn't enough.
>
>Obviously. I thought it was clear that I was talking about mappings
>that preserve the transition relation between states.

Any transition relations between mental states are more or less
irrelevant here.  The physical states will usually be much more
fine-grained than the mental states; maybe there will be thousands
of physical state-transition for a single mental state-transition
(whatever a "mental state-transition" is).

>I'm not trying to get a detailed theory out of you, I'm only trying to
>pin you down on one small point: If system A implements system B, then
>does that mean that every mental property possessed by B is also
>possessed by A?

That depends on how one individuates "systems", and so on, but
I more or less agree with the above statement.

-- 
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."


