From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!ames!agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!uknet!mcsun!sunic!seunet!kullmar!pkmab!ske Wed Sep 23 16:54:51 EDT 1992
Article 7013 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: ske@pkmab.se (Kristoffer Eriksson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind
Message-ID: <7209@pkmab.se>
Date: 23 Sep 92 09:31:29 GMT
References: <1992Sep13.194856.21976@meteor.wisc.edu> <1992Sep22.043249.4954@meteor.wisc.edu>
Organization: Peridot Konsult i Mellansverige AB, Oerebro, Sweden
Lines: 33

In article <1992Sep22.043249.4954@meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:
>I think psychology must proceed from consciousness as an axiom.

Ah. If consciousness is just an axiom, then what is to prevent me from
axiomatically declaring me and my computer the only conscious entities
in the world? If you can find an answer to why that would be a worse
solution that declaring that all humans are conscious, then perhaps,
it doesn't need to be given as an axiom.

> I think error in either case is apalling:
>failing to grant rights to a conscious entity would be awful, but granting
>rights to a nonentity seems to me far more dangerous.

This way you could argue that no-one at all, except you, should be accepted
as conscious.

> Unless and until you can come up with such a test, I think we
>have to assume that all of our overblown toasters are just toasters, and
>all of the people are conscious.

You have not justified your arbitrary choice of drawing the line bewteen
people and everything else, in stead of somewhere else. Why not, for
instance, draw it between white people and colored people, as some have
done in the past? The point is: All you are left with, with your way of
handling consciousness, as to what is conscious and what is not, is an
arbitrary choice. And in particular, your arguments seem to lead to the
conclusions, that a better state of affairs in that regard, is not
possible, not even in theory.

-- 
Kristoffer Eriksson, Peridot Konsult AB, Stallgatan 2, S-702 26 Oerebro, Sweden
Phone: +46 19-33 13 00  !  e-mail: ske@pkmab.se
Fax:   +46 19-33 13 30  !  or ...!{uunet,mcsun}!mail.swip.net!kullmar!pkmab!ske


