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Article 1638 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Consciousness (was Re: Daniel Dennett)
Message-ID: <1991Nov26.135953.5926@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 26 Nov 91 18:59:51 GMT
References: <JMC.91Nov17135110@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> <1991Nov17.190935.5546@husc3.harvard.edu> <YAMAUCHI.91Nov26024948@indigo.cs.rochester.edu>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
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Nntp-Posting-Host: zariski.harvard.edu

In article <YAMAUCHI.91Nov26024948@indigo.cs.rochester.edu> 
yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes:

>In article <1991Nov25.101026.5866@husc3.harvard.edu> 
>zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

MZ:
>>>>I'd like to support this view by
>>>>noting that if you accept Colin McGinn's arguments that there
>>>>exists some property of the brain that accounts naturalistically
>>>>for consciousness, but we are cognitively closed with respect to
>>>>that property, i.e. our concept-forming capabilities cannot extend
>>>>to a grasp of that property (see "The Problem of Consciousness"),
>>>>then we would be forced to admit that, operational success
>>>>notwithstanding, the machine has to lack consciousness.

BY:
>What are McGinn's arguments?  Why on Earth should humans be inherently
>incapable of understanding consciousness?

I was going to summarize McGinn's argument, but I changed my mind.  If this
is to be an informed conversation, it would be irresponsible of me to
initiate another discussion of a philosopher no one among my interlocutors
has read.  The book is published by Blackwell; anyone wishing to discuss
McGinn's views is hereby invited to read the first chapter.

Instead, I'll suggest a reductio ad absurdum of the AI view.  Assume that
the mind is reducible to the functioning of the brain.  Then we may
conclude that the mind shares the computational limitations of an FSA.
Consider the fact that, in contrast with Turing Machines, there is no such
thing as an Universal FSA.  

In other words, why aren't you an Ultra-intuitionist, denying all but
practically "feasible" numbers?

'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`
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: Qu'est-ce qui est bien?  Qu'est-ce qui est laid?         Harvard   :
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: Connais pas! Connais pas!                                 think    :
:                                                             so     :
: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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