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Article 1368 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: MIND, BRAIN, CONCIOUSNESS
Message-ID: <14899@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 15 Nov 91 19:15:06 GMT
References: <37577@shamash.cdc.com> <1991Nov11.182221.10967@sun!kla> <37922@shamash.cdc.com>
Organization: Edinburgh University
Lines: 63

In article <37922@shamash.cdc.com> (Mark A. Peters) map@svl.cdc.com writes:

>Consciousness can't be defined because it is an irreducible, self-evident,
>primary fact that is implicit in all arguments, all knowledge, and in
>particular, all definitions.  

Consciousness can't be defined _if_ etc., not _because_.

>Regardless of one's knowledge, however, every
>concept has to rest ultimately on irreducible primaries that can't be
>formally defined, otherwise an infinite regression results, making
>formation of the concept impossible from the outset.

We are trying to explain human mentality, which includes such things
as the concept of consciousness. Your comment above is based on a
set-theoretic view of conceptualisation. We already know that humans
naturally operate a much more complex scheme, and have invented the
set-theoretic simplification for useful formal purposes. Surely it is
a) an open question whether a set-theoretic taxonomy of concepts is
adequate to _account_ for natural human concepts, and b) a fundamental
mistake to _identify_ a natural human concept as a primary in a formal
system intended to _explain_ human mentality?

>The point is, 
>conceptualization has to start *somewhere*, and the only place it has to 
>start is with reality, i.e., what we can observe via sense-perception - 
>"consciousness" is one such fundamental starting point.

This is only true if you are attempting to hoist your own
knowledge-base off the ground solely by means of Cartesian first
principles. It will be a remarkable and entertaining feat of
philosophical prestidigitation if you succeed, but there is no reason
why you should be the first to do so. Many are the great who have
failed.  After all, we know that the human mind does not begin as a
tabula rasa exposed to raw sensory input, so why should it necessarily
be possible to offer a rational reconstruction of it in such terms?
You may wish to reply that if the mind does not start as a tabula
rasa, then whatever it contains in its pristine state must equally be
considered a philosophical given. That, however, is only necessary if
you insist upon playing the Cartesian solipsist. Once you are prepared
to admit the existence of your parents, their parents, the rest of the
human race, civilisation, evolution, and so on, those things which
seem so a priori to the solipsist become the potentially
comprehensible end result of various extra-personal social and
evolutionary mechanisms.

>Consciousness is one of the preconditions of proof,
>and therefore not subject to proof itself.

This is the sort of muddle that Cartesians are always getting into. It
is easy to escape, one simply has to change one's point of view. This
does, however, require a great deal of courage if (like Descartes) one
was badly frightened by an infinite regress at an impressionable age.
The thing is that not all regresses are infinite. In fact, finite
regresses are an extremely useful implementational and explanatory
trick in the mental domain. In the computational domain one variety is
known as recursion, and every young programmer learns the dangers of
omitting progressive simplification and an end-stop from hir
recursions. The penalty for such carelessness is an infinite regress.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205


