🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep12.232531.3921@sco.com> evanh@sco.COM (Evan Hunt) writes:

>One cannot measure consciousness in a system (or in a person) save by
>evaluation of the system's (or person's) behavior.  Your replica seems
>just as conscious as you; can you suggest any further test I might
>subject it to that would prove it nonsentient?

No, none at all.  Behaviour and internal function can provide plausible
evidence one way or the other, but they can't *prove*.  That's one of
the things that makes the problem of consciousness so hard.  But this
doesn't mean that one should *define* consciousness in terms of behaviour,
unless one is some kind of verificationist.  The question of whether
such a system possess or lacks consciousness seems entirely meaningful,
independent of one's knowledge of its behaviour.

>It can indeed be logically argued that "being conscious" and "acting
>conscious" are separate, but unless "being conscious" is independently
>measureable, the assertion can never be proven.

Not at all.  Measurement of consciousness could tell us that being
conscious and acting conscious are *empirically* separate; but even
if they empirically go together, so that every system that acts
conscious in fact is conscious, that wouldn't change the fact that
the existence of consciousness is a further fact over and above the
behaviour.  It would simply mean that there was some kind of lawful
correlation between the behaviour and consciousness.  Compare:
whenever you hold an apple up, it will fall down: but that doesn't
mean that being held up and falling down are the same thing.  They're
just empirically connected.

The separateness of the notions of "being conscious" and "acting
conscious" is demonstrated simply the fact that the notion of
a system of one without the other is coherent.  Take the good ol'
giant lookup-table (although any system might do): now, whether
or not it in fact possesses consciousness, it is meaningful
to speculate that it doesn't, and the answer to that question is
a contingent matter.

-- 
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."