Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
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From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and consciousness
Message-ID: <CzsKqx.Gon@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <vlsi_libCzHB5I.Fn7@netcom.com> <3aj4a9$9ct@mp.cs.niu.edu> <3b0176$hu8@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1994Nov24.121032.27675@oxvaxd>
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 1994 21:52:08 GMT
Lines: 47

In article <1994Nov24.121032.27675@oxvaxd>,  <econrpae@vax.oxford.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <3b0176$hu8@mp.cs.niu.edu>, rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>> In <3avt19$3er@news1.shell> hfinney@shell.portal.com (Hal) writes:
>>>(Two red herrings should be disposed of.  The first is that people may
>>>disagree about whether someone is conscious.  But people disagree about
>>>many objective matters, such as whether the earth is round.
>> 
>> When people disagree about objective matters, there are objective
>> tests that can be made to settle the issue.  What objective tests do
>> you propose for establishing consciousness?  Be sure to specify tests
>> that would work equally for robots as for humans.
>
>This view, that a property cannot be objective unless there are proper
>scientific tests for it, is a brand of verificationism.
>
>Not everyone agrees with it - for instance, a mathematical platonist might
>claim that there is a fact of the matter as to whether Goldbach's conjecture is
>true even though there is no available test to decide its truth. (If Goldbach's
>conjecture has been solved, please substitute some other undecided problem).
>
>The main problem with verificationism is that it prejudges the course of
>science. OK so there is no scientific test _now_ which can tell if a
>person/robot is conscious, but that does not mean we will never find one. If we
>do find one, consciousness will _always_ have been an objective property, it
>won't suddenly change.
>
>Was the property of being made out of gold a subjective property until chemists
>formulated scientific tests of goldhood?
>
Yes. This is exactly the point. When chemists formulated scientific tests of
goldhood, they at the same time changed the content of the term. Before 
"gold" was something which had such and such properties and other substances,
as long as they showed these properties, were "gold" too. 
When chemical test were developed, which differentiated among various things
called "gold" until then, a decision had to be made to which of these to
apply the term. Wasn't this decision subjective? As you may know, there are
various types (isotopes) of gold. Which one is "real" gold?
Again, as in another post, the disagreement can be traced to a philosophical
stance. Are our clasiffications "objective" or "subjective"?
May I suggest Lakoff's "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things"?  
>
Andrzej
-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Instructional and Research Computing  what they think and not what they see.
pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca                           Huang Po
