🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep28.202810.110716@Cookie.secapl.com> frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:

>Step back a moment, and imagine that you are a computer which has been
>programmed/learned to be conscious.  (Assume that the structure of the
>program is enough like the way the brain works that it is *really*
>conscious, not just "faking" it -- I think "faking" it is impossible in the
>real world, but I could be wrong.  N.B. This note is not directed at those
>who believe real AI to be impossible; but based on his postings, I doubt
>that Mr. Chalmers falls into this category.)  You ask, "what are my qualia"?
>They are the interactions of your self (a portion of a computer program
>running on a computer) with the outside world.  "But why do I feel them?"
>Because you are this system, and feeling is part of what you do.  What other
>kind of explanation is even conceivable for such questions?

To say my qualia *are* the interaction of the program with the world
is to beg the question.  Certainly that may be where they come from.
"Feeling is part of what I do".  Well, what I *do* consists of
certain computations, and reactions, and the like -- it's not even
obvious why all this computation should be accompanied by a "feeling"
at all.  A lot of people think that it wouldn't be; I think that it
would, but that's a contingent hypothesis.  The people that deny
that a computer would feel are at least making a logically possible
hypothesis.

What other sort of explanation?  Well, if it's to be a physicalist
explanation, it must be an explanation of why the presence of qualia
is entailed by the computational organization of the system.  Consider
by analogy an explanation of learning -- we'd explain how, by virtue
of the computational organization, the system's behaviour adapts to
its environment in response to stimuli and the like, and we'd then
say, that's all it *means* to be "learning".  If you can give such
an explanation for consciousness, good luck (but beware of simply
*redefining* consciousness to be an ability to react in a certain
way).

If one gives up on physicalism, all sorts of explanations are possible.
In particular, one can simply admit the existence of qualia as a brute
fact, much as the physicists admits the existence of matter as a brute
fact, and then try to systematize the relation between qualia and the
physical.  I note that this is the strategy taken by so biologically
grounded a figure as Gerald Edelman in his latest book.  He admits
that one can't derive the existence of qualia from any physical theory;
one simply has to "assume" them, and then one can go about theorizing
about them.  He doesn't call his position "dualism", but that seems
to be merely a matter of terminology.

-- 
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."