HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Boise State University
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 22:57:39 GMT

In article <26519@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>In article <1992Oct1.220055.20934@kurango.cit.gu.edu.au> tjdavis@kurango.cit.gu.edu.au (Tim Davis) writes:
>>cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>
>>>There are chess programs which manage to figure out why they are in
>>>check, can learen how to avoid it in future, put up with it if
>>>neceessary for some greater purpose, etc., all without needing to be
>>>conscious of being in check. 
>
>>I am somewhat confused by the second comment.  If in fact the chess
>>programs have no need to be conscious of being in check then what is
>>'it' that they are trying 'to figure out why they are in', what is 'it'
>>they will 'put up with if necessary for some greater purpose'?  The
>>game must be conscious of 'something' in order to develop these other
>>tendencies.
>
>Not so. All they need (and all they have) is an internal
>representation of the fact and circumstances of being in check, in a
>form which is amenable the mechanical inferencing system employed.
>Indeed, in expert systems, knowledge representation plus mechanical
>inferencing systems are not only capable of chains of deductive
>reasoning, and making hypotheses and testing them, but of explaining
>what they are doing and why they are doing it in a persuasively
>rational manner.

If they can do this, they are conscious.

 And all without any consciousness at all. It could
>(as Babbage demonstrated) all even be done with clockwork.

Even if they are made of clockwork.

>
>One thing which artificial intelligence research has demonstrated
>conclusively is that these kinds of reasoning do not need
>consciousness. The fact that we employ consciousness in such reasoning
>is not relevant. We also employ consciousness to perform long
>division, but, fortunately for calculator manufacturers, consciousness
>is not an essential ingredient of mechanised arithmetic.
>-- 
>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


-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 20:35:19 GMT
Organization: Security APL, Inc.

In article <Bv9vGp.Ax3@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>Precisely what needs to be explained is why that radiation "feels"
>like anything at all -- i.e. why that all physical processing is
>accompanied by an experiential feel -- so your parenthetical
>explanation here won't do.  There is also the secondary question
>of why it feels like *that* rather than like *this* -- it seems
>perfectly coherent that our blue experiences and red experiences
>could be systematically inverted, for instance.

Do you think how it feels has no behavioral consequences?  Would you behave
as you do if your blue experiences and your pain experiences were
systematically inverted?
From: holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Boise State University
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 15:02:04 GMT

In article <Bv9vGp.Ax3@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>In article <1992Sep28.005156.11177@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>
>>RH:
>>>>Show me a point of difference between my conscious experiences and the
>>>>cor[r]elated physical events in my brain.
>>
>>DC:
>>>Just about anything -- e.g. the blueness of my blue-experiences.
>>
>>It would be useful to me if you could expand on this a bit.  For
>>certainly the experience of 475 nanometer electromagnetic radiation
>>has to feel like something to us (since we "feel" everything we
>>experience), and we happen to label this something blueness.  Are you
>>seeking an explanation of why blue light isn't experienced as,
>>say, pain?  For that I think we would have to turn to the evolutionary
>>development of the brain.
>
>Precisely what needs to be explained is why that radiation "feels"
>like anything at all -- i.e. why that all physical processing is
>accompanied by an experiential feel

I deny that it is "accompanied" by an experiential "feel" at all; it
just _is_ its "feel".  Show that it isn't.


 -- so your parenthetical
>explanation here won't do.  There is also the secondary question
>of why it feels like *that* rather than like *this*

Everything is itself; you can't get further than that.

 -- it seems
>perfectly coherent that our blue experiences and red experiences
>could be systematically inverted, for instance.  Even when all
>the physical facts are in, it seems arbitrary why one kind of process
>is accompanied by this experience, and another kind by that one.

It is arbitrary.

>As I said in another post, evolution won't do as an explanation,
>as it will only get you as far as the current physical details.
>Evolution is irrelevant to the question of why *this* physical
>sructure gives rise to *this* experiential feel.

Each physical structure is itself and not anything else...

>
>-- 
>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."


-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu
From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 06:13:15 GMT

In article <1992Sep28.150204.4237@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:

> -- so your parenthetical
>>explanation here won't do.  There is also the secondary question
>>of why it feels like *that* rather than like *this*
>
>Everything is itself; you can't get further than that.
>
> -- it seems
>>perfectly coherent that our blue experiences and red experiences
>>could be systematically inverted, for instance.  Even when all
>>the physical facts are in, it seems arbitrary why one kind of process
>>is accompanied by this experience, and another kind by that one.
>
>It is arbitrary.

Well well well.  It's arbitrary.  That's quite enough, as far as
I'm concerned, to establish dualism.  Given the physical facts,
the correspondence between physical facts and qualitative feels
*could have* been that way, but *in fact* it's this way.  So
this correspondence is a further fact.

Seriously, yours is turning out to be about most dualist of
non-dualist theories that I've ever come across, all but
acknowledging the distinctness of the properties in question
and the lack of a conceptual entailment relation between them
(although a bizarre, radically extensionalist epistemology
stops you from putting it quite that way), but dealing with
this by asserting a brute identity between these properties
without any conceptual connection to back it up.  Qualia *just
are* physical; don't ask why.

>>As I said in another post, evolution won't do as an explanation,
>>as it will only get you as far as the current physical details.
>>Evolution is irrelevant to the question of why *this* physical
>>sructure gives rise to *this* experiential feel.
>
>Each physical structure is itself and not anything else...

And there we go again...

-- 
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."
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: burt@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca (Burt Voorhees)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: "Consciousness Explained"
Date: 6 Oct 92 19:48:19 GMT
Article-I.D.: aupair.burt.718400899

wadley@mullauna.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Gregory Robert Wadley) writes:

>I'm reading "Consciousness Explained" by Dan Dennett.

>Can anyone tell me what the reaction to this book has been?
>References would be good.
>Sorry if it's been discussed already and I missed it.

  I can tell you my reaction.  It was that Dennett was basically engaging
in an exercise of his ego, and at the same time trying to sell me a bill
of goods.  I found his rather patronizing attitude ("Of course this new
view I am propounding is going to be complicated for you to understand
at first, yuo poor ignorant slob, but once you get it then you will be
on the right track at last and agree with me.") offensive, his arguments
generally not convincing, and in general agree with the comments made
last spring on this newsgroup by Mickail Zelaney that the book was
intellectually dishonest.
burt voorhees
burt@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca
From: frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams)
Subject: Re: The Cosmological Bad Dream
Date: Mon, 05 Oct 1992 20:29:04 GMT
Organization: Security APL, Inc.

In article <1992Oct3.105750.43545@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>     One of the conditions for a felicitous *assertion* is that the
>speaker have evidence for its truth at the time of utterance. 
>Since a testable, non-obvious and therefore non-trivial scientific
>hypothesis is supported or falsified or revised for years after it
>is stated, it seems to me that a scientific hypothesis cannot be an
>assertion.  This works out empirically: if the hearer of an
>assertion later discovers a single counter-example, (s)he concludes
>that the assertion was false.

Not really.  If I assert, "I saw the man come in.  He was tall, thin,
brown-haired, wore glasses, and smoking a cigar.", and it turns out his hair
is actually black instead of brown, you don't necessarily conclude that my
assertion was "false".  It *do* conclude that it was not correct in every
detail.

Scientific hypotheses are like this; they have a lot of detail, and some of
the detail can be wrong without falsifying the assertion as a whole.
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: ledwards@leland.Stanford.EDU (Laurence James Edwards)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 92 11:41:35 GMT

In article <26439@castle.ed.ac.uk>, cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
|> In article <1992Sep30.010007.21214@leland.Stanford.EDU> ledwards@leland.Stanford.EDU (Laurence James Edwards) writes:
|> 
|> >Second, it
|> >seems advantageous to be conscious of pain (i.e. be able to think about it)
|> >so that one can figure out why one is in pain. That way one can avoid similar
|> >situations in the future, or one can choose to ignore the pain if the
|> >situation requires. 
|> 
|> There are chess programs which manage to figure out why they are in
|> check, can learen how to avoid it in future, put up with it if
|> neceessary for some greater purpose, etc., all without needing to be
|> conscious of being in check. 

True enough, but a chess board is a bit more structured of an environment
than the world we live in ... and there aren't too many succesful chess
programs that can ignore the fact that they are in check :-) yes, I realize 
that chess programs probably do ignore some potential threats if they
are not in immediate check.

Anyway, it's getting late but conciousness is tied to free will and free will
is tied to the fact that this universe is kinda random ... and I am outa here!

-Larry


Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Subject: Re: "Consciousness Explained"
Organization: Smith College, Northampton, MA, US
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 12:53:19 GMT

In article <9228019.4978@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> wadley@mullauna.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Gregory Robert Wadley) writes:
>I'm reading "Consciousness Explained" by Dan Dennett.
>
>Can anyone tell me what the reaction to this book has been?
>References would be good.

The Behavioral and Brain Sciences (hope I got that journal name right)
about two issues back includes a paper by Dennett that overlaps 
substantially with a chapter of his book, followed by ~25 responses 
and critiques by researchers in a variety of fields, followed by a 
long rebuttal.  I understand there will an entire issue of another
journal (Inquiry?  Someone correct me...) devoted to a similar
collection of responses to CE.
	The reaction has been considerable.  Dennett must be spending
fulltime responding to his critics.
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 15:51:44 GMT

In article <Bv9v4M.AL9@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>In article <1992Sep28.002120.11473@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>
>>Surely qualia exist (i.e. evolved) so as to allow the physical sensory
>>input to become a component of thought.
>
>Evolution is irrelevant here.  Evolution will get you as far as the
>current physical structure of the brain.

You are assuming your conclusion.  That is, in saying that evolution
determines physical structure but is irrelevant to qualia, you are
assuming that qualia have nothing to do with physical structure.  But
if, in fact, we did evolve, if evolution only explains the physical,
and if qualia exist, then surely this combination is strong evidence
that qualia are physical.

>                                          What needs to be explained
>is: why, given that the brain is like so, do qualia exist?

So, all your asking is for a complete functional description of the brain.
From: barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 5 Oct 92 04:35:46 GMT
Organization: UCLA, Mathematics Department

In article <26534@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
> Many years ago to entertain some schoolkids I wrote a BASIC program
> based on ELIZA which was capable of having apparently sensible
> conversations 

> I take it that you would have insisted that the program's dispelling
> of the illusion was the trickery, and that I had actually succeeded in
> writing a conscious computer program in 60Kbytes of BASIC?

No, probably you demonstrated that Rogerian psychologists are 
not intelligent beings :-)

--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet; NeXTMail is welcome)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 21:32:57 GMT

In article <1992Sep25.145109.20168@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:

>Show me a point of difference between my conscious experiences and the
>corelated physical events in my brain.  I know that I use different
>language to talk about them; that doesn't constitute evidence of a
>difference.

Just about anything -- e.g. the blueness of my blue-experiences.
If the facts about my brain were exhausted by the facts given to
us by physics, then there'd be no reason to suppose that there
were any blue-experiences going on at all.

-- 
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."
From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 2 Oct 92 17:40:27 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <1992Oct1.220055.20934@kurango.cit.gu.edu.au> tjdavis@kurango.cit.gu.edu.au (Tim Davis) writes:
>cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:

>>There are chess programs which manage to figure out why they are in
>>check, can learen how to avoid it in future, put up with it if
>>neceessary for some greater purpose, etc., all without needing to be
>>conscious of being in check. 

>I am somewhat confused by the second comment.  If in fact the chess
>programs have no need to be conscious of being in check then what is
>'it' that they are trying 'to figure out why they are in', what is 'it'
>they will 'put up with if necessary for some greater purpose'?  The
>game must be conscious of 'something' in order to develop these other
>tendencies.

Not so. All they need (and all they have) is an internal
representation of the fact and circumstances of being in check, in a
form which is amenable the mechanical inferencing system employed.
Indeed, in expert systems, knowledge representation plus mechanical
inferencing systems are not only capable of chains of deductive
reasoning, and making hypotheses and testing them, but of explaining
what they are doing and why they are doing it in a persuasively
rational manner. And all without any consciousness at all. It could
(as Babbage demonstrated) all even be done with clockwork.

One thing which artificial intelligence research has demonstrated
conclusively is that these kinds of reasoning do not need
consciousness. The fact that we employ consciousness in such reasoning
is not relevant. We also employ consciousness to perform long
division, but, fortunately for calculator manufacturers, consciousness
is not an essential ingredient of mechanised arithmetic.
-- 
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
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: The Cosmological Bad Dream
Date: 5 Oct 92 04:31:45 GMT
Organization: UCLA, Mathematics Department

In article <qk42RB1w165w@netlink.cts.com> snodgras@netlink.cts.com (John  
Snodgrass) writes:
> As many people are beginning to realize, there is
> alot to be gained from a study of the sociology of science, not to
> mention the linguistics.
> 
>       John E. Snodgrass [snodgras@cyber.net (mail)]

Yes---the people realizing that dwell in otherwise
barren fields, and hope to act as paraites on the back of
science, in order to legitimize their interests.

As I've said before: what contribution have these folks made
_to_ scienec. None I'm aware of.

--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet; NeXTMail is welcome)
From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 6 Oct 92 15:14:23 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <1992Oct5.190709.17067@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:
>In article <26534@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:

>>I take it that you would have insisted that the program's dispelling
>>of the illusion was the trickery, and that I had actually succeeded in
>>writing a conscious computer program in 60Kbytes of BASIC?

>No.  But ELIZA does not in fact have internal representations which it
>really uses to explain what it is doing to a questioner; its
>apparently intelligent responses _are_ a trick.  The expert systems
>referred to by the original posting do, and so, in my view, they are
>conscious.

The original Weizenbaum ELIZA did have some primitive internal
representations to help it make sense, such as recently used keywords
which it could fall back on when it could make no sense of a response.

My BASIC program had more -- It kept track of such things as topics of
discussion, type of discussion, and length. It used these to do such
things as try to provoke taciturn responders, to return to good topics
when a responder seemed to be getting irritated, etc..

So I presume that you think my program was conscious?

>I think that _everything_ has "qualia", in
>Cahlmers's sense of having a "bare experiential feel".  Consciousness,
>for me, has something to do with "knowing oneself" to some extent.  I
>would recognize any system which maintains an internal model of its
>own activity and can provide answers to queries about same as
>(minimally) conscious.  Note that consciousness does not necessarily
>go with being terribly bright.

It seems that quite a small and simple device would satisfy your
criterion of consciousness. For example, would a thermostat which had
a "what state?" enquiry button and two coloured lamps with which to
reply to the query be (minimally) conscious? 

How about if we omitted the button and always made the lamps track the
internal state? Conscious?

How about if we omitted the lamps and simply took the lid off an
ordinary thermostat so that enquirers could tell the internal state by
inspection? Conscious?
-- 
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
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
From: daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough)
Subject: Re: Dualism
Organization: ORA Corporation
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1992 18:49:01 GMT

In article <7560@skye.ed.ac.uk>, jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

>And some other people say functional organization is irrelevant, that
>any distinction apart from those based on behavior is arbitrary, etc.
>You and Searle (and I) are on the same side in thinking that something
>else is (or may turn out to be) relevant.
>
>I think this is an important issue, because it seems to me that many
>on the net are indeed "in the grip of an ideology" (as Searle says,
>though it may not be exactly the ideology he identifies).  So far as I
>can tell, the ideology is something like a verificationist (or
>falsificationist) philosophy of science, coupled with a dismissive
>attitude towards questions or claims that aren't scientific (as so
>defined).

Jeff, accusing people of being "in the grips of an ideology", as
Searle calls it is nothing but sophomoric name-calling. Why is it more
"ideological" to believe that behavior is sufficient than to believe
that behavior is *not* sufficient?

And you are wrong, as I have pointed out many times before, to
associate the view that intelligence, consciousness, etc. are
behavioral is identical with verificationism. I am not in any way a
verificationist.

>I then have to wonder what their attitude would be towards
>certain other "unscientific" questions, such as: what rights do we
>have?, should they be extended to machines?, to amimals?  If we can't
>ever have good reasons for deciding such questions one way or the
>other, if reason is helpless in cases that can't be "verified", then
>all that's left is power: who's right is whoever wins.

The problem you are worried about isn't peculiar to verificationists.
Even if everyone believes that there is absolute right and wrong, and
even if everyone believes that there are means to establish truth
beyond logic and empiricism, you are still stuck if (1) people
disagree about what is true, and (2) people disagree about what is a
good way to reason about truth.

Thus your complaint boils down to: there is a problem if people can't
agree on important things.

>Indeed, I think some people are fortunate that the debate has been
>focused on the obscure philosophical issue of intentionality rather
>than on, say, free will, where the moral, ethical, and political
>issues might be more visible.

The nice thing about philosophical discussions is that you can explore
alternatives (you can get beyond your natural ideology) without having
to worry about dire consequences if you happen to be wrong.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY









Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech