From: max@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com (Max Webb)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (was: Logic and God)
Date: 8 Oct 92 23:04:22 GMT
Article-I.D.: hilbert.1992Oct8.230422.5045
Organization: Cypress Semiconductor Northwest, Beaverton Oregon

In article <1992Oct6.204155.13168@meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:
>In article <BvpMGo.KLy@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> pindor@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor) writes:
>>In article <1992Oct5.022907.6131@meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:

>Those who insist on defending its existence should come
>up with plausible arguments as to what makes them believe that the sequence
>of rule-implementations could be conscious, when clearly no individual
>rule-implementation can be.

It isn't clear to me.
You have advanced Searle's argument as an argument in favor
of substance dualism (it is not, and Searle says so). We have pointed
out that this argument ignores one possibility of where consciousness
could lie, implicitly taking the conclusion of the argument as an
assumption. Once that is pointed out, his argument is dead.

Nevertheless, one response to your request goes: We are continuous with
the rest of the animal kingdom. You, for example claim cats are alive.
Simpler members of the animal kingdom have had their entire nervous systems
mapped out, and simulated, with _IDENTICAL_ behavior resulting. This is
exactly the kind of progress you claim will be impossible in humans. Now,
spirits have been historically claimed to dwell in all living things,
for reasons and intuitions like the ones you present to us. But where we
can check, there is no such thing. Therefore, the credibility of the
claim where we CAN'T yet check is weakened.

We have given you other replies:
Kindly explain how functional barriers such as commisurotomy (severing the
corpus callosum) can split awareness in two halves, if awareness is
not another aspect of a physical phenomenon. If I chop a TV in half,
does the viewer split as well? Only if the viewer is part of the TV!
This is now the 4th time I have brought it up - your response that
it merely deprives the soul of information is not responsive, and misses
the point.

And again, kindly explain how lesions in the dominant hemisphere can
induce blindness that is *not* noticed - the question is not how information
subsequently fails to appear in consciousness, but how it is that
the consciousness cannot _detect_ it's own incompleteness? That is clearly
an indication that the soul _itself_ has been injured. You have never
answered this, either - it is unresponsive to say that visual information
is blocked - how is it that the consciousness cannot _detect_ that it
is missing, unless the self-reflexive character of consciousness ITSELF
has been damaged?

>>>Only the tenacious insistence that intelligent function is identical to
>>>experience allows one to insist that me following rules I don't understand 
>>>creates a conscious entity, while me following rules I do understand does not.
>>Again, where did you get this from? I do not see how is it relevant whether
>>a person following the rules understands them or not.
>
>This is what I gather from the 'systems' reply to the Chinese room question.
>If I implement a Chinese-understanding algorithm that I don't understand,
>it is proposed that a consciousness exists somehow in the 'system' that is
                                    ^ insert _MAY_ here.
>distinct from my own. On the other hand, if I implement an algorithm that
>I fully understand, say playing tic-tac-toe, no such additional entity is
>proposed.

If you understand the rules system, you will understand whatever the
rules system understands. If you do not, you will not. What is so
counterintuitive about that?

More explicitly:

If you had total direct access and control, 24 hours a day, to and
over the contents of another consciousness, you would certainly regard it as
an extension of yourself. The human interpreter who understands
his rules has this access and control. The human, and the simulated entity
form one unified cognitive field. The human interpreter who does
not understand his rules, does not have this access and control. Obviously.
He can play host, or not, but the mere power of life and death over another
does not merge you with that entity. 2 separate cognitive fields, ... IF the
rule system is aware.

From the perspective of the rule system (IF it has a perspective) the
situation is different - it's existence does not depend on the understanding
or lack of understanding in the host. If the interpreter understands the
rules system and interferes in it, it may find itself suddenly doing and
knowing things without knowing why. It may well come to understand itself
as a projection of another being, or it may not (particulary if blocked
from doing so). If the interpreter does _NOT_ interfere in it, then the
rules system may never become aware of the existence of the other.

2 centuries ago substance dualists were proposing that little spirits
pushed the sap up into trees, since that was the easiest theory for them
to imagine. I submit that 'ease of imagination' is a total failure as a
criteria for the evaluation of theories.

Regards,
	Max G. Webb
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy