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From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Subject: Re: Definition of Consciousness
References: <CLwAzy.L0z@eskimo.com> <39r3b8$8hq@emoryu1.cc.emory.edu>
Message-ID: <CzDxMw.275@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: news@festival.ed.ac.uk (remote news read deamon)
Organization: University of Edinburgh
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 1994 00:06:31 GMT
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In article <39r3b8$8hq@emoryu1.cc.emory.edu> labin@unix.cc.emory.edu (Ian Noe) writes:

>The 
>most despicable and criminal activity happening in philosophy and science 
>today is the materialistic reduction of consciousness to machinery.  

So it seems to those with Victorian conceptions of machinery. On the
other hand, computer science and aritificial intelligence, through the
notion of the general purpose computer, and the virtual machine, have
demonstrably extended the range of behaviour of which "machinery" is
capable into arenas well beyond normal notions of "mechanism" and
"mechanical", indeed, well beyond what Ada Lovelace considered the
limits of computers.

Nobody is yet remotely close to reducing the externals of biological
cognitive behaviour to machinery, let alone human consciousness. It is
simply a good working hypothesis that future research will one day
extend the concept of machinery that far. It is a hypothesis that may
be proved wrong in the best possible way -- by the failure of such a
well-principled attempt that it is comprehensibly and comprehensively
demonstrated to be impossible. To hypothesize that machine
consciousness is possible is the correct way of founding such a
research programme; and such a research programme is the best possible
way of answering the question "is the hypothesis true?".

What is a good working hypothesis with which to found a research
programme is quite a different matter from one's personal opinion
about how the research programme will probably end up, and why; an
important distinction which I fear you fail to make.

To imagine that consciousness has in fact already been conceptually
reduced to machinery is a gross exaggeration of current understanding
both of consciousness and of machinery. To call the ambition to
develop both concepts to such a point that the hypothesis becomes
experimentally testable a criminal activity seems to be inspired by
the same Faustian fear of knowledge that perverted Mary Shelley's
story into the Frankenstein Monster with bolts through its neck.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
"The mind reigns, but does not govern" -- Paul Valery
