From: tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (was: Logic and God)
Date: 9 Oct 92 04:02:28 GMT
Organization: University of Wisconsin, Meteorology and Space Science

In article <1992Oct8.230422.5045@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com> max@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com (Max Webb) writes:
>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.

Wow, this business sure leads to some surprising assertions! Are you saying
that a flip-flop changing state or a neuron firing are conscious?

>You have advanced Searle's argument as an argument in favor
>of substance dualism (it is not, and Searle says so). 

I have advanced it for what it is, an argument against the equivalence
of consciousness and algorithmic processing.

>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. 

It has become clear to me that, as Searle points out in his Scientific
American article, that this "systems" argument is a dualist position,
so it can't be advanced in the cause of materialism! (an odd mirror of
what you accused me of, but to me it seems a valid point.)

>Once that is pointed out, his argument is dead.

I disagree. I still think that consciousness cannot arise from manipulation
of symbols, because the symbols have no meaning without a consciousness
attributing meaning.

>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.

I claim precisely that behavior is not identical with consciousness.

Furthermore, we are continuous with all of matter, but there is a mysterious
discontinuity somewhere between ourselves and a virus, one side of which
has an experience and the other side which doesn't. This phenomenon remains
untouched by science, except as an observation that it does exist.

> 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.

I suspect that the verification is on the other side of the discontinuity, but
in any case behavior is not consciousness.

>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.

I don't know. Perhaps the awareness is split in two, perhaps one or both
halves no longer have any experience at all, even though they are somewhat
functional. I make no claim for a law of conservation of conscious
entities: such a law is flatly contradicted by the far more common evidence
of birth and death. My claim is not that consciousness is independent of
brain function. It is only that brain function is insufficient to produce
consciousness by virtue of any known or plausible objectively verifiable
physical phenomenon. Similarly, your examples of the fascinating qualia
that result from various brain injuries miss the point. Clearly the brain
has something to do with it. My point is that we are still utterly
mystified as to what that might be.

>>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.

I don't understand your waffling with "may". If it doesn't ever exist, then
Searle's argument holds. If it MAY exist, then we are considering only those
interesting hypothetical cases where it does. Besides, if it MAY exist but it
does not NECESSARILY exist, how can you propose that consciousness is
algorithmic while two functionally identical algorithms exist
with only one of them conscious?

>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?

You are proposing the creation of life by virtue of my own ignorance.
I find this astonishing. That you may be right I am willing to consider, 
but that it is not counterintuitive is an assertion I find baffling.

>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.

Granted. I submit that the absence of an actual theory is a profound
weakness of a purported theory, though.

With that, I'm bowing out of this debate for a while. Many thanks to
all of you for stimulating conversation, but it's starting to detract
from my work. I will read all responses, and will probably show up 
again some time.

In the meantime, don't take any wooden Turing tests!

mt
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy