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Article 2444 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Ignore Searle and be happier
Message-ID: <1991Dec30.193339.28438@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: 30 Dec 91 19:33:39 GMT
References: <1991Dec28.222433.17716@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <61172@netnews.upenn.edu> <1991Dec30.185605.23355@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Lines: 26

In article <1991Dec30.185605.23355@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>
>No, there's more going on here than the trivial Sorites paradox.  As a
>rule the Sorites (heap) paradox is no deep paradox at all, just a
>semantic puzzle.  The reason being, of course, that most properties,
>e.g. "is a heap", "is tall", etc, are not black-or-white two-valued
>predicates, but are capable of gradually fading away over a continuum
>of cases.  My point, if you read the original post, is that it seems
>implausible that consciousness is such a property.  To be more precise:

 What is implausible about it?

 Surely a cat or a dog has a much less intense experience of consciousness
than a human.  Surely a fish has a far far less intense consciousness, if
it has any consciousness at all.

 It is a mistake to get hung up on consciousness when it is something so
vague that it cannot even be measured.  For example you have no idea
at all, and no method of determination, of whether I experience consciousness.
At best you can infer it based on similar biology and similar reactions.

-- 
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  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940


