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From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and consciousness
Message-ID: <jqbD0D0ty.AI8@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <3aukr2$t3h@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1994Nov23.184324.27664@oxvaxd> <3b1ani$38p@mp.cs.niu.edu> <CzsBvB.32I@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 1994 22:51:34 GMT
Lines: 36

In article <CzsBvB.32I@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <3b1ani$38p@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>
>>I can design an objective test for primeness.  If you design an
>>objective test for consciousness, which meets general agreement as to
>>validity and could be applied to test robots as well as people, I
>>will withdraw my claim.
>>
>>Until someone produces such a test, I will continue to hold that
>>consciousness is subjective.
>
>Judgments of consciousness in others are subjective, because we lack
>an agreed objective test.  I can agree with you that far.  But then
>I say those judgements might be wrong.  That is, there's a fact
>of the matter even though we currently (and perhaps forever) lack
>a suitable test.

There can only be a fact of the matter if we have a definition of consciousness
that is, in principle, objectively testable; that is, if consciousness is
defined in objective terms, even if we lack the technology to make such
discriminations.  But we have no such definition of consciousness.
Perhaps at some point we will have a theory of mind in which consciousness
is so defined, and then there will be a fact of the matter (assuming that
the definition distinguishes between actual categories), but it will be
a fact of the matter about consciousness-as-defined-in-that-theory, not
consciousness-as-the-word-is-used-in-1994.  To claim otherwise is to
claim absolute meanings for words, something you just claimed not to do in the
gold discussion.  There will be no fact of the matter as to whether what is
meant by consciousness-as-defined-in-that-theory is the *same* as what is meant
by consciousness-as-the-word-is-used-in-1994, because the latter cannot be
articulated.  We can't even tell whether what you mean by it is the same
as what I mean by it (actually, we can be virtually certain that it isn't).

-- 
<J Q B>
