Wolfgang:
How very interesting, your music. I'm tempted to listen. Unfortunately, I don't
have the time right now to hook up.
You mention a laid back version of Eric Sati's melancholic masterpiece...How
laid back can you get with his music? A rhetorical question.
Wolfgang, this is not an invitation to discuss music with you. I much prefer to
follow the discussions herein Re: neuroscience, albeit in my neophyte capacity.
Carry on maestro.
Oz
Wolfgang Schwarz wrote:
> 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?"
