Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!newshost.marcam.com!insosf1.infonet.net!internet.spss.com!markrose
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Objective access to the subjective
Message-ID: <D0KH8A.18z@spss.com>
Sender: news@spss.com
Organization: SPSS Inc
References: <3bd8s0$1q2@pobox.csc.fi> <3c90na$90s@agate.berkeley.edu> <D0K46u.G06@spss.com> <3cajtg$7i@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 1994 23:28:57 GMT
Lines: 35

In article <3cajtg$7i@agate.berkeley.edu>,
Gerardo Browne <jerrybro@uclink2.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>I've already told you, if we change our meanings, "qualia" disappear.
>What I'm pointing out here is that talk about conscious experience follows
>a certain pattern.  It is my position that we have to jettison talk about
>consciousness.  You however have come to IMO a confused compromise with
>such talk.  You want to have your cake and eat it too.  You want to
>retain talk about "experiences", and yet *also* begin talk about
>measuring things.  In my mind this is as absurd, really, as retaining
>talk about "bad vibes" and beginning talk about *measuring* those
>bad vibes.

I was talking about color, not bad vibes.  If you can't find any difference
between them, it's you who are confused.  As just one example of such 
confusion, take this statement:

>You can say the same thing when a machine fails to measure a place's
>true level of bad vibes.  

This is no analogy to my position; the measurements of color I was talking 
about are observations of brain events.  Color is not a property of objects, 
and bad vibes are not a property of places.  

Apparently you haven't grasped what I was saying; but I admit to not 
understanding your position either.  One the one hand you say you want to 
"jettison talk about consciousness"; on the other you are concerned with 
being able to disagree with machines attempting to measure your experiences 
(didn't we jettison your experiences?); on the third hand you say "What we 
experience on a given occasion depends logically on our impressions of it 
*later on*", quite an elaborate claim about things we've jettisoned.

It's fine with me to stop here; but if you want to continue please note that 
claims that it's absurd to relate measurements to conscious experiences, or 
that experiences depend on later impressions of them, are just that, claims, 
and mean nothing to me unless you can provide arguments in favor of them.
