HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: zlsiida@fs1.mcc.ac.uk (dave budd)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
Date: 26 Jan 93 16:53:24 GMT
Organization: Manchester Computing Centre

In article <dpn2.239.727932872@po.CWRU.Edu> dpn2@po.CWRU.Edu (Damien P. Neil) writes:

>My personal opinion is that there is no current way to _prove_ that any 
>particular organism is concious or unconcious. Therefore, the best policy is 
>to assume that anything that _acts_ concious (i.e. conforms to our views of 
>our own conciousness), _is_ concious. I have seen my cat appear to express 
>happiness, desire, fear, and other emotions. Therefore, while it is possible 
>that my cat is no more concious that my computer, I assume that it is in 
>fact concious.

I'm not at all convinced that emotions have anything much to do with the 
type of consciousness we're discussing here.  I feel they're largely sub-
conscious (I don't mean they operate in or emanate from "the subconscious", 
just that they're not involved in consciousness).  Emotion could be how we 
managed to stay alive before we had thought, and it's thought that is 
central to consciousness: the ability to abstract ideas from phenomena, the 
idea of a self, and so on.  The ability to plan may be a good benchmark for 
consciousness: I think dogs can do this, and cats; goldfish probably not, etc

    Actually, Occam wore a beard: philosophers kept borrowing his razor
    Dave Budd, MCC, Oxford Rd, Manchester, England    (44|0)61-275-6033
From: stgprao@st.unocal.COM (Richard Ottolini)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Minds, Computers and Searle
Date: 27 Jan 93 23:06:55 GMT
Organization: Unocal Corporation

In article <1993Jan27.210202.22368@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>In article <chrisk.728156188@fester> chrisk@fester.dell.com (Chris Kostanick - X6736) writes:
>>
>>I'm curious as to what you think is possible in AI, weak or strong.
>>Let's assume that compute power will continue to grow for another
>>couple/three hardware generations. This should make 100 Mip machines
>>readily accessable. What do you think an AI program running on
>>one (with suitable robot effectors and vision aparatus) could do?
>>
>I'm not sure why sheer computational power would be relevant to the question.
>Weak AI can do for cognitive science exactly what computational models do
>for other sciences: formalize and idealize parameters thought to be
>crucial, and show you in pretty short order what kinds of behaviors
>such a model implies. Compare to data, revise model, and off to the races
>we go.

Much of the seminal work on AI was done in the late 60s and 70s on machines that
KOP speeds (thousands of operations per second).  There was a hypothesis that some
of AI's problems could be solved by building a "fast" computer.  An industry was
created and died in the 1980s to build fast LISP (later PROLOG) machines.
(This industry died because general purpose RISC micros could run LISP faster than
special purpose machines.)  The 10,000 - 100,000 fold increase in computing
speed in the past twenty some years did not accelerate progress of AI
in many people's opinion.  Japan's 5th generation project was the most
ballyhoed disappointed along this approach.  I personally am hopeful in
regards to strong AI, but faster computers were not the answer.  Some more
fundamental understanding of the nature of intelligence is the likely answer.
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 03:35:02 GMT

>In article <1993Jan25.115504.13869@sophia.smith.edu% orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>%
>%	Let me add to this thought.  The night after I last sprained my
>%ankle, I had great difficulty sleeping from the pain, but I managed a
>%few hours of fitful sleep.  It seems clear to me the pain continued while
>%I was asleep.  Searle argues for this convincingly in "The Rediscovery of
>%the Mind."  My body responded to the pain even while asleep, e.g., by not
>%attempting to roll over.  So one can have unconscious pains.
>
Perhaps you only had pain while sleeping to the extent that you sleep was
interupted by times of (partial?) consciousness.



-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1
Xref: sparky comp.ai.philosophy:7367 sci.philosophy.tech:4931
From: dpn2@po.CWRU.Edu (Damien P. Neil)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 16:08:29 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University
NNTP-Posting-Host: b63519.student.cwru.edu

In article <1993Jan24.024230.5977@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>Searle says that "it seems to me a well-attested empirical fact
>that dogs are conscious."  [The Rediscovery of the Mind, p.74.]
>I haven't read much about animal consciousness, and I would
>be interested to hear the opinions of various philosophers on 
>the topic.  Is it as uncontroversial as Searle implies?

I very much doubt it. My freshman philosophy teacher maintained that humans 
are the only self-aware creatures on the planet, and that we perceive 
conciousness in animals because we tend to judge all things by ourselves.

Personally, I considered this to be utter nonsense. Personally, I feel that 
the argument that my cat is concious is as sound as the argument that my 
roommate is concious. (Actually, he isn't right now. He's sleeping. :-)
-----
Damien Neil   dpn2@po.cwru.edu    "Until somebody debugs reality, the best
Case Western Reserve University    I can do is a quick patch here and there."
CMPS/EEAP double majoring masochist               - Erik Green
Xref: sparky comp.ai.philosophy:7430 sci.philosophy.tech:5010 sci.logic:2653
From: rar@csl.sri.com (Bob Riemenschneider)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
Subject: Re: Searle on syntax mirroring semantics
Date: 28 Jan 93 13:02:18
Organization: Computer Science Lab, SRI International, Menlo Park, CA.
NNTP-Posting-Host: birch.csl.sri.com
In-reply-to: orourke@sophia.smith.edu's message of Tue, 26 Jan 1993 12:11:55 GMT

In article <1993Jan26.121155.24448@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:

>   Can anyone explain this sentence to me?  It is on p.203 of "The
>   Rediscovery of the Mind" by John Searle.
>
>           The development of proof theory showed that within certain
>           well-known limits the semantic relations between propositions
>           can be entirely mirrored by the syntactic relations between
>           the sentences that express those propositions.

The completeness theorem for first-order logic can be read as saying
that, if P is a set of propositions that can be expressed by a set of
first-order sentences S and q is a proposition that can be expressed by
a first-order sentence t, then P formally implies q (a semantic
relation) if and only if t is derivable from S (a syntactic relation).
As a consequence, many other semantic relations correspond to syntactic
relations.  But not all do, by G\"odel's incompleteness theorems.


                                                        -- rar
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 03:38:25 GMT

In article <C1F6vp.LpI@umassd.edu> pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU writes:
>In article <1993Jan24.024230.5977@sophia.smith.edu>, orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>>Searle says that "it seems to me a well-attested empirical fact
>>that dogs are conscious."  [The Rediscovery of the Mind, p.74.]
>>I haven't read much about animal consciousness, and I would
>>be interested to hear the opinions of various philosophers on 
>>the topic.  Is it as uncontroversial as Searle implies?
>
>SG	Moderns, following Descartes' primacy of consciousness, confuse 
>consciuousness w/self-conscioiusness. Conciousness is the widest fact here. 
>There are many states of consciousness: sensation, perception, reason, 
>emotion, imagination, etc, etc. Self-consciousness may be 
>perceptual or rational. Only humans have self-consciousness. Brute animal 
>behavior can be completely explained by perception.  See Objectivism.

Trying to pass this distinction off as an invention of objectivism is like
trying to credit the Nazis with the invention of architecture. The distinction
between consciousness and self-consciouness has been around since long before
Ayn Rand. See philosophy.

-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
From: ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon)
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
Organization: HoloNet National Internet Access BBS: 510-704-1058/modem
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 18:45:31 GMT


In article <dpn2.232.727891709@po.CWRU.Edu>,
dpn2@po.CWRU.Edu (Damien P. Neil) writes:


>Personally, I feel that the argument that my cat is conscious is as sound
>as the argument that my roommate is conscious. (Actually, he isn't right
>now. He's sleeping. :-) 

I consider myself to be experiencing a type of "consciousness" even when
I'm sleeping.

It seems to me that our consciousness of other minds depends a lot on the
demands made by those minds.  When a barking dog keeps me awake at night
it's obvious to me that the dog should know better, his owner should train
him not to do that.

Sometimes we treat inanimate objects as though they were conscious.  If I
stub my toe on a misplaced object, I'm likely to reel off a number of
references to it's ancestry and mating habits before I calm down and place
it in it's proper location.

This is drifting off the subject of consciousness in animals, but my point
is that some of the traits of "consciousness" we read into animals is a
matter of our own emotional needs.

On the other hand, it's obvious that horses have more horse sense than some
people (some of the time), it's obvious that cats have something on their
mind when they rub up next to your leg at feeding time.  It's also obvious
that dogs have something on their mind when they try to hump your leg,
though I'm not sure exactly what.

Finally there's the matter of our purposely ignoring consciousness at
times.  I've been told a lobster doesn't feel the pain of boiling water if
you tickle it's belly first.

Also, humans sometimes think other humans aren't "truly" conscious, the
lights are home but nobody's home.  

Sometimes we even think we ourselves aren't conscious.  If I am heavily
involved in thinking about work when I'm driving home, I might suddenly
discover I'm home and have no recollection of the drive.  Was I really
unconscious of driving the car?

--
Ken Easlon
ken@holonet.net

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
From: orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Subject: Searle on animal consciousness
Organization: Smith College, Northampton, MA, US
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 02:42:30 GMT

Searle says that "it seems to me a well-attested empirical fact
that dogs are conscious."  [The Rediscovery of the Mind, p.74.]
I haven't read much about animal consciousness, and I would
be interested to hear the opinions of various philosophers on 
the topic.  Is it as uncontroversial as Searle implies?
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Minds, Computers and Searle
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 18:14:29 GMT

In article <8226@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>In article <1993Jan16.101540.1225@skynet.uucp> ice@skynet.uucp (Ice) writes:
>
>>Searle is whining like a spoilt child by pointing out that a computational
>>metaphor for mind is "wrong," without offering a realistic alternative.
>
>You don't think it's useful to point out a mistake, even if you can't
>offer a solution?
>
>I'm amazed that people working in AI spend so much time on these
>issues when they're relevant to only a very small part of AI.
>Even in Cog Sci most (I think) of what people do would still be
>worth doing even if Searle were right.
>
To repeat for the 37,000th time, the CR -- right or wrong -- is directed
at Strong AI only. The vast majority of cognitive scientists I deal with,
in both psychology and AI, are not proponents of strong AI, and many find
the idea somewhat ludicrous. The "targets" are McCarthy, Minsky, and
Newell & Simon (as Searle himself states explicitly).

-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1
Xref: sparky comp.ai.philosophy:7403 sci.philosophy.tech:4978
From: davis@passy.ilog.fr (Harley Davis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
Date: 26 Jan 93 09:39:28 GMT
	<1993Jan25.023842.11756@sophia.smith.edu>
	<1993Jan25.115504.13869@sophia.smith.edu>
	<1k0r1tINN5fn@cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Organization: ILOG S.A., Gentilly, France
In-reply-to: chandra@cis.ohio-state.edu's message of 25 Jan 93 13:47:41 GMT


In article <1k0r1tINN5fn@cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu> chandra@cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran) writes:

   Would you say that a patient under anesthesia is in pain, he just
   doesn't feel it? I think that would be an odd use of the term.

Maybe it depends on where the anesthesia intervenes in the pain
generation process.  In an extreme example, my mother just had a
cataract operation in which there was a local mild anesthesia, but
also some amnesia-inducing drug that was supposed to make her forget
the entire operation afterwards.  (It didn't work, by the way ---
yuck!)  The situation is rather muddled.

-- Harley Davis
--

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
nom: Harley Davis			ILOG S.A.
net: davis@ilog.fr			2 Avenue Gallie'ni, BP 85
tel: (33 1) 46 63 66 66			94253 Gentilly Cedex, France
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
From: auerbach@ncsu.edu (David D Auerbach)
Subject: Re: Searle on syntax mirroring semantics
Organization: NCSU
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 13:53:58 GMT

orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:

>Can anyone explain this sentence to me?  It is on p.203 of "The
>Rediscovery of the Mind" by John Searle.

>	The development of proof theory showed that within certain
>	well-known limits the semantic relations between propositions
>	can be entirely mirrored by the syntactic relations between
>	the sentences that express those propositions.

Well, without the context it just seems like an unnecessarily vague way of
pointing at the completeness theorem for first-order logic; roughly, that
the semantic relation of first-order consequence (taken as adequately
captured by a Frege-Tarski formal semantics) is co-extensive with <name
your favorite first-order logic derviation system>.  
More vague is the "well-known" limits.  He could mean a) that first-order
logical theoremhood is "only" r.e. and not recursive or b) that full
second-order logic is not so nice proof theoretically  or c) if all of
arithmetic is somehow "semantic" then (cashing in syntactic as
axiomatizable) the truths of arithmetic outstrip any correct axiomatization.
These are mere sketches, and c) is the least plausible reading of Searle's
remark. 
A more general way of looking at it is that the notion of logical form is
unexpectedly successful in tracking semantic relations; this restores all
of Searle's vagueness (in the out of context quote, he said carefully) but
sounds nicer.
Xref: sparky comp.ai.philosophy:7436 sci.philosophy.tech:5013
From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
Date: 28 Jan 93 23:18:38 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <8285@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

>I don't think it's entriely clear that cats are conscious.  Certainly,
>their consciousness must be rather different from ours.  The cat goes
>to the door, and you think "he wants to go out".  But the cat can't
>think "I want to go out", or even "birds".  So what, if anything, is
>actually going on in this cat's consciousness (so to speak)?

I have three cats, one of which is very clever. When one of the other
cats gets lost, I take the clever cat with me to look for it. After a
bit of my calling for the lost cat and searching, the clever cat gets
the idea and starts searching in a systematic fashion, and calling. I
take it because it's better than me at finding the lost cat, and leads
me to it.

If one of the other cats gets locked in a room, it goes to find
someone, and then tries to lead them to the room to get the other cat
out.

If a big fierce strange cat enters the house, this cat goes to find
someone to help it repel the intruder.

I think this cat understands about helping, getting help, and being
helped. I can't explain the behaviour any other way.


-- 
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
Xref: sparky comp.ai.philosophy:7393 sci.philosophy.tech:4971
From: chandra@cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
Date: 25 Jan 1993 17:08:49 -0500
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept. of Computer and Info. Science
NNTP-Posting-Host: cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.edu

In article <1993Jan25.105152.5776dave@tygra.Michigan.COMDC:  dave@tygra.Michigan.COM (David Conrad) writes:
DC: In article <1jvevlINN4va@cannelloni.cis.ohio-state.eduDC:  chandra@cis.ohio-state.edu (B Chandrasekaran) writes:
BC: [H]aving goals (which is
BC: the same as desires, I think) and knowledge (or beliefs) is orthogonal
BC: to being conscious, I think.

DC: I wouldn't say that it's orthogonal.  Orthogonal implies not only that one
DC: could have goals and knowledge without being conscious, but also that one
DC: could be conscious without having goals and knowledge.  Do you assert this
DC: latter proposition?  I think it would describe an intelligence quite
DC: different from our own, if it were even possible.
DC: 
DC: Rather, I would say that having goals and knowledge is a necessary, but
DC: not a sufficient, requirement for consciousness.

Yes, that is what I meant, thanks for the correction.


Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 02:25:33 GMT

In article <26JAN199314064356@ctrvx1.vanderbilt.edu> mcgeege@ctrvx1.vanderbilt.edu (MCGEEGE) writes:
> You won't
>read anything about the really interesting arguments about consciousness and 
>mind, like those by Levinas, Derrida, James, Zaner, Rollo May, etc., here, 
>because there is no interest in the FELT problem of mind/body/consciousness.

You're wrong. Read Searle. He's not a phenomenologist, but he is specifically
interested in the essential *subjectivity* of consciousness.

>Here, in American Philosophy of the 21st C, it is a big professional crossword
>puzzle for your amusement. End of diatribe.
>
Read first. Diatribe after.


-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar)
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 17:42:39 GMT

In article <1993Jan25.005814.12035@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>In article <24JAN199317172344@ctrvx1.vanderbilt.edu> diwadkva@ctrvx1.vanderbilt.edu (Vaibhav A. Diwadkar) writes:
>>
>>	- On an added note, if evolution is indeed a continuous process,
>>	I wonder why it would give rise to discontinuous phenomenon like
>>	consciousness etc.  By discontinuous I mean a case where only
>>	one species has it and noone else on the evolutionary continuum
>>	does.
>>
>I agree with your beliefs abount animal consciousness, but I think this
>(common) line of evolutionary "reasoning" is spurious. What about the
>"discontinuity" of cordates having central nervous systems? What about the
>"discontinuity" of animals having the power of movement? What about the 
>eucaryotic "revolution". Evolution is full of "discontinuities" of this sort. 
>If it weren't, it would be damn hard to develop a taxonomy of life forms.
>

In addition, unless one is a panpsychist, it is necessary to speculate
that there is *some* discontinuity in (early) evolution, since I would
think that most folks would agree a bacterium is not conscious.

- michael


Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 00:47:54 GMT

In article <dpn2.232.727891709@po.CWRU.Edu> dpn2@po.CWRU.Edu (Damien P. Neil) writes:
>In article <1993Jan24.024230.5977@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>>Searle says that "it seems to me a well-attested empirical fact
>>that dogs are conscious."  [The Rediscovery of the Mind, p.74.]
>>I haven't read much about animal consciousness, and I would
>>be interested to hear the opinions of various philosophers on 
>>the topic.  Is it as uncontroversial as Searle implies?
>
>I very much doubt it. My freshman philosophy teacher maintained that humans 
>are the only self-aware creatures on the planet, and that we perceive 
>conciousness in animals because we tend to judge all things by ourselves.
>
You've made a standard confusion. Let's not get the whole discussion
confused about it. Consciousness is not the same a self-consciousess
(or "reflective consciousness"). Mammals are seemingly quite aware
of their environments (see the "pain" posting of another poster).
This makes them consciousness. Whether they are aware of themselves
(as conscious agents, not just as other objects in the world) is
a whole other question. The opinion of your "freshman philosophy teacher"
does not count as an argument in any case. You also used the terms
"perceive" and "judge" in vary imprecise ways. 


-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1