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Article 1397 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Daniel Dennett
Message-ID: <1991Nov18.083024.5560@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 18 Nov 91 13:30:22 GMT
References: <1991Nov16.014015.1074@yarra-glen.aaii.oz.au> <OZ.91Nov17172508@ursa.sis.yorku.ca>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
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In article <OZ.91Nov17172508@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> 
oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes:

>zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

MZ:
>							...	the
>   problem with people like Dennett, aside from what I consider to be the
>   anti-humanistic orientation of their claims,

OY:
>Can you elaborate on what you mean by anti-humanistic orientation?
>What are the claims that you think are both credible and of humanistic
>orientation?

I believe that the very notion of "Man a Machine" is anti-humanistic both
in its intrinsic nature, and in its historical development (the guillotine,
labor camps, terrorist state).  Besides, as Victor Yodaiken recently
pointed out to me, the goal of creating a perfect, conscious artificial
slave is anti-humanistic in itself.

MZ:
>					 is the intellectual dishonesty
>   with which they dismiss any argument that casts a doubt on the fundamental
>   assumptions of their project.

OY:
>Your charge that Dennett has been intellectually dishonest is a
>serious one.  You are no doubt prepared to substentiate this charge,
>not with vague generalities, but with specific references to Dennett's
>work.

I am sorry, but I was making a general statement about the AI field, as
exemplified e.g. in the Boden anthology, "The Philosophy of Artificial
Intelligence", which starts out from an unconvincing and fallacious
argument replete with hidden premisses (_the brain_ *can* be imputed with
computational properties, therefore _the mind_ *must* be computational in
its nature, implicitly assuming that man is a finite being in every
relevant aspect), includes but one genuine objection to the program
(Searle's "Chinese Room" argument), and curtly dismisses it without
inquiring into its implications.

MZ:
>   					... On the other hand, given the
>   jejune approach to the problem of consciousness embodied in the works of AI
>   luminaries, this should come as no surprise to anyone exposed to the
>   classical treatments of this question.

OY:
>Again, can you be more specific?

Oh, "classical" as in Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, Freud... or in moderns like O'Shaughnessy, Nagel, or McGinn.
The point is not necessarily to solve the mind-body problem, but at least
to ask the right sort of questions.

>... oz


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