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Article 2445 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Ignore Searle and be happier
Message-ID: <1991Dec30.194943.25819@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: 30 Dec 91 19:49:43 GMT
References: <61172@netnews.upenn.edu> <1991Dec30.185605.23355@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> <1991Dec30.193339.28438@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
Lines: 23

In article <1991Dec30.193339.28438@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:

> 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.

As I said in the last posting, it's reasonable for degree of consciousness
to vary when functional organization is allowed to vary.  It seems less
plausible that degree of consciousness could vary when functional
organization is held fixed.

e.g. Here I am sitting in my office with my part-silicon brain, staring
at the bright red apple on my desk.  I say "Yum!  What a nice bright red
apple", but in my phenomenology, all there is is a tepid pink?  The point
is that given that there's a phenomenology there at all, it doesn't seem
to be the kind of thing that one could be systematically mistaken about.

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


