hi Jim,
you don't seem to be particularly open to views other than your own,
but let's give it a try anyway...
;^)
Jim Balter wrote:
> > As for consciousness, it seems that one just begs the question if one
> > seeks a functional definition. The difference between a conscious
> > system and a system that lacks consciousness is in the first place not
> > that the former can perform actions which the latter can not, but that
> > "there is anything it is like to be" the former system, but not the
> > latter [2].
>> This is nonsensical blather and prejudice.
Whereas this is an excellent argument, I see.
> David Chalmers can do no better
> in describing the difference between himself and his zombie counterpart
> than to say that the zombie is "all dark inside". Of course, being
> "all dark inside" is being *like* something after all. [...]
so at least you understood what he wants to say: There is nothing it
is like to be a zombie, it's not even dark in there.
> his notion may be quite incoherent.
Perhaps you should read the "Foundations" chapter in his "Conscious
Mind" (pp.3-31). That there are (at least) two concepts of
consciousness - functional/psychological/access consciousness and
phenomenal consciousness - is certainly one of the few insights of
recent philosophy of mind that proved very fruitful. (I think the
distinction was first made by Ned Block in 1994).
> There are all sorts of arrested development. Both Searle and Nagel have
> been thoroughly refuted in the philosophical literature, [...]
> The logic of Searle's Chinese Room couldn't even pass a freshman
> course in logic;
oh dear.
As for Nagel I don't even see what a refutation could be - his
"bat"-essay is not an argument, it's more like an appeal to intuition.
> In fact, Searle's argument hinges on the mind of the Searle homunculus
> being explainable only in the standard folk theoretic mental framework.
> It is the room itself that operates, ex hypothesi, on Schank's principles.
> Thus, when Searle insists, his response to the Systems Reply, that the room
> itself is not conscious, he has proven nothing, but is merely repeating his
> prejudices.
I'm not entirely convinced by Searle's argument either. However, I can
see its force: Syntactic symbol-pushing does not generate meaning
(semantics). And since all that happens in the room is syntactic
manipulation of symbols, the symbols only get their meaning by the
people who write the input and read the output. The room isn't
conscious because there is nothing it could be conscious of.
This raises an interesting issue about the nature of meaning, e.g. it
must be asked how meaning is generated in neurobiological processes.
> The above mentioned David Chalmers does a nice job of
> dismissing Searle's amateurish confusion in his book _The Conscious Mind_.
hm. I didn't find Chalmer's treatment (pp.322-6) satisfying. It relies
on his fading and dancing qualia arguments which are imho not
convincing at all.
> Of course, it is only natural that the internal incoherence of the
> doodoolists' conceptions will express itself as an external incoherence
> amongst them.
*grins*
and you're talking of _my_ prejudices?
regards,
Wolfgang.
--
homepage: http://www.wald.org/wolfgang
"Wo kaemen wir hin, wenn jeder sagte: 'wo kaemen wir hin?' und keiner
ginge, um zu sehen, wohin wir kaemen, wenn wir gingen?"
