From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!rutgers!uwvax!meteor!tobis Mon Oct 19 16:59:09 EDT 1992
Article 7272 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!rutgers!uwvax!meteor!tobis
>From: tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Simulated Brain
Message-ID: <1992Oct14.221625.28631@meteor.wisc.edu>
Date: 14 Oct 92 22:16:25 GMT
References: <BILL.92Oct14020023@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu> <1992Oct14.152444.21325@meteor.wisc.edu> <1992Oct14.180354.8129@spss.com>
Organization: University of Wisconsin, Meteorology and Space Science
Lines: 60

In article <1992Oct14.180354.8129@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <1992Oct14.152444.21325@meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.edu 
>(Michael Tobis) writes:

>>	"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
>>		That alone should encourage the crew.
>>	Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
>>		What I tell you three times is true."

>If anyone has been attempting arguments by assertion here, Michael, it's
>you. 

I assert very little beyond that consciousness is not behavior, a point
that many others here acknowledge. I think that this is so apparent that
I can hardly imagine how to defend it. Other than that, I state my hunches
and point out that there is no less evidence for my hunches than for
Searle's or Dennett's or Minsky's or whoever's.

>I don't recall your providing a single argument in favor of your
>dualistic idea of mind.  (Distaste for materialism is not an argument.)

I have no arguments that pass the muster of the accepted rules of science,
but neither does anyone else. Distaste for dualism isn't an argument either.

>At the same time none of your interlocutors, so far as I can see, is guilty
>of the notions you attribute to them, such as the idea that the nature of
>consciousness is already explicated, 

Again, especially since the scientific method rejects subjective evidence, 
applying the scientific method to subjective phenomena is not guaranteed to 
work.  Most of you folks seem to think that the scientific method invariably 
succeeds, and that, while it may elude us at present, a scientific explanation
of consciousness must in principle exist. I claim that this assertion is as 
unsupported as its contrary.

So, whether or not (as Dennett seems to claim) consciousness is explained,
most of the people here seem convinced that such an explanation is possible
in principle. I think this belief has no foundation beyond intuition, and
I acknowledge that my belief to the contrary has no foundation beyond 
intuition. At least my belief is falsifiable: come up with an explanation
that isn't just handwaving and I will concede the point.

>or that consciousness can emerge from 
>a system without being designed in.  

Well, it is often claimed that an algorithm which responds coherently  to
Chinese has a conscious experience of Chinese. This looks like a counter-
example to me.

>Your positions are not made 
>more attractive by misrepresenting those of your opponents.

I cannot keep all of you folks straight just yet. If I respond to something
A has said in a posting by B, I apologize if it is taken as an attribution
to B. I think this has happened a few times, and I need to watch for it.

But I'm not trying to make a political argument, so I don't care about the
attractiveness of my ideas, just their validity.

mt


