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From: mjs14@unix.brighton.ac.uk (shute)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and consciousness
Message-ID: <1994Nov28.135205.27234@unix.brighton.ac.uk>
Organization: University of Brighton, UK
References: <3b0n0h$ite@news1.shell> <3b11sh$hod@cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 13:52:05 GMT
Lines: 41

Hal Finney (hfinney@shell.portal.com) wrote:
>>The problem is this:
>>A) Whether a machine is running a certain program is a subjective
>>   judgement.  There is no right or wrong in the matter.  It depends
>>   on how you look at it, how you interpret what is happening.
>>B) A machine running the proper program becomes conscious.  (This is
>>   the strong AI principle.)
>>C) Whether something is conscious or not is not a subjective matter.
>>   We all know from personal experience that there is no room for
>>   doubt about our own consciousness.  This is a question where there
>>   is a right answer and a wrong answer.  Bill Clinton is conscious,
>>   and anyone who denies it is wrong.
>>Now, I believe, to a considerable degree, all three of these statements.
>>Yet they seem to contradict each other.  This poses a dilemma for me.
>>Do other people feel this way?

In article <3b11sh$hod@cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu> hpm@cs.cmu.edu writes:
>Well stated.
>I agree with A and B.
>Like Neil, I disagree with C.  Consciousness, like beauty, is a purely
>subjective interpretation put on a process.  [...]

I've just this weekend read a back issue of New Scientist that bears
directly on the problem of how consciousness might be both private, and
yet subject to evolutionary selection.

Humphrey, N. (1994). 'The private world of consciousness', New Scientist,
141:1907, 08-Jan-1994, IPC Magazines Ltd, pp 22-25.

(To summarise, he suggests that an organism with reflexes to red light
and green light, might evolve so that it not longer needs to react
immediately to these two stimulii, so long as it still registers their
detection internally (in case they need to be reacted to later)... and
that this internalisation is in the form of signals that represent
what it would have felt like for the muscles to have reacted to the
red light, or the green light, had the reflexive actions been allowed to
proceed.  Thus the qualia for 'red' is in the form of muscle commands
for the 'red wriggle', and that for 'green' those for the 'green wriggle').
-- 

Malcolm SHUTE.         (The AM Mollusc:   v_@_ )        Disclaimer: all
