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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Strong AI and consciousness
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Date: Thu, 8 Dec 1994 20:49:14 GMT
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In article <jqbD0D0ty.AI8@netcom.com> jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter) writes:
>In article <CzsBvB.32I@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
>Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>>In article <3b1ani$38p@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>
>>>I can design an objective test for primeness.  If you design an
>>>objective test for consciousness, which meets general agreement as to
>>>validity and could be applied to test robots as well as people, I
>>>will withdraw my claim.
>>>
>>>Until someone produces such a test, I will continue to hold that
>>>consciousness is subjective.
>>
>>Judgments of consciousness in others are subjective, because we lack
>>an agreed objective test.  I can agree with you that far.  But then
>>I say those judgements might be wrong.  That is, there's a fact
>>of the matter even though we currently (and perhaps forever) lack
>>a suitable test.
>
>There can only be a fact of the matter if we have a definition of 
>consciousness that is, in principle, objectively testable;

Not so.  Tests concern what-we-can-find-out, and that can be different
from what-is-the-case.

>  that is, if consciousness is
>defined in objective terms, even if we lack the technology to make such
>discriminations.  But we have no such definition of consciousness.

I'm not sure what you mean by "defined in objective terms".

Something is conscious if it has subjective experience.  Something
that has subjective experience has subjective, whether or not we
have a test for subjective experience.

Here's an example.  I'm going to stop and think about something
for a bit.  ...  Ok, that's done.  Now, I was thinking about a
particular thing, and that remains the case whether or not there
is an in-principle, objective test.

In any case, I don't think definitions are as important as you seem to
think they are.  I agree (MOL) with this:

  From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
  Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
  Subject: Re: Dualism
  Message-ID: <Bv0CJn.LIs@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>
  Date: 23 Sep 92 01:38:11 GMT

  In article <1992Sep22.203507.24667@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:

  >Whoa!  Just a minute there.  We cannot redefine consciousness unless
  >there is already a definition.  I have not yet seen a satisfactory
  >definition.

  Well, we don't need to give an explicit definition of consciousness;
  we just have to know what the term means.  And that's clear enough,
  as I said in another post -- it's the existence of subjective
  experience, or of having "something it's like to be".  (I don't
  claim, that these are "definitions" in terms of more primitive
  entities, but I do claim that most of us know just what phenomenon
  we're talking about when we talk about consciousness in the key
  sense, or qualia, or whatever.)

  In particular, given that we know what the term means, then we know
  when a proffered definition is simply wrong.  If someone tried to
  define consciousness as "flying pigs", they'd obviously be changing
  the subject.  Similarly, if someone tries to define consciousness
  as a behavioural capacity, or as a brain event, they're changing
  the subject.  The problem of consciousness is not "how can we
  behave like so", or "why is our brain like so"; it's "why is our
  subjective experience like this?".  (Of course, that's not to
  rule out the possibility that consciousness might *turn out* to
  be a brain event, or whatever, but if it does, it certainly won't
  be a logical necessity, or a truth in virtue of meaning.)

>Perhaps at some point we will have a theory of mind in which consciousness
>is so defined, and then there will be a fact of the matter (assuming that
>the definition distinguishes between actual categories), but it will be
>a fact of the matter about consciousness-as-defined-in-that-theory, not
>consciousness-as-the-word-is-used-in-1994.

Perhaps there will be a fact w.r.t. consciousness-as-defined-in-that-theory,
but in any case there is w.r.t. consciousness-as-described-above.
Consciousness-as-the-word-is-used-in-1994 is a different question,
because the word is used in several different senses.

>To claim otherwise is to
>claim absolute meanings for words, something you just claimed not to do in the
>gold discussion.

Nonsense.  No absolute meanings are required.  All that's needed is
that (a sense of) consciousness now be as indicated above (subjective
experience).

>There will be no fact of the matter as to whether what is
>meant by consciousness-as-defined-in-that-theory is the *same*
>as what is meant
>by consciousness-as-the-word-is-used-in-1994, because the latter cannot be
>articulated.  We can't even tell whether what you mean by it is the same
>as what I mean by it (actually, we can be virtually certain that it isn't).

I don't particularly care what you mean by it.  But any time you're
prepared to stop hiding behind Aaron Sloman's claims that "consciousness"
isn't sufficiently well-defined, let me know.

-- jeff



