Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!samsung!umich!yale!cs.yale.edu!blenko-tom
From: blenko-tom@cs.yale.edu (Tom Blenko)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Chalmers on Searle
Message-ID: <25771@cs.yale.edu>
Date: 8 Aug 90 19:17:16 GMT
References: <53619@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <25761@cs.yale.edu> <53635@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Sender: news@cs.yale.edu
Organization: /usr/local/lib/news/rn/organization
Lines: 48
Nntp-Posting-Host: morphism.systemsz.cs.yale.edu
Originator: blenko@morphism.CS.Yale.Edu

In article <53635@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> dave@cogsci.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
|The point is that Searle believes "intentionality =>
|introspectability".  Therefore "~introspectability => ~intentionality".  And
|this is how his arguments go: demonstrate (arguably) that certain entities
|don't have introspectability (consciousness), and so (by the implicit premise)
|don't have intentionality.  Given that the implicit premise is highly
|disputable and not even argued for in the original paper (although he does
|produce some arguments in this direction in the BBS paper forthcoming this
|year), we may conclude that the arguments, so far as they go, should
|really be taken to be about introspectability/consciousness/phenomenology,
|not about intentionality.

Other intentional states Searle mentions are joy, fear, love, hunger,
and exhilaration.  I understand his claim to be that if you believe an
entity has all of these intentional properties, and then you discover
that it doesn't really, then you will no longer suppose it to have
a mind.  Don't you think most people would agree?

|The question of
|how we might establish that certain creatures have conscious experience is 
|independent of the question about what conclusions we might draw, once
|we know that they have such experiences.  Direct introspection is the easiest
|way to answer the first question, but it's rather limited, so one hopes
|it's not the only way.  Analogy is another method that seems to serve us
|well in real life.

But I think this misses an important point (in the same way that many
previous postings to this group have): irrespective of what (objective)
evidence for X is available or justifiable, each of us concludes X or
not-X every day.  Each of us, for example, necessarily has an
immediate, comprehensive, and robust theory of the physical world. The
theory is sure to be wrong in many respects, and (I presume)
inconsistent and incoherent as well.  It is "correct enough" for us to
successfully navigate through the physical world, so it must reflect
information about the (real) physical world.  It is also flavored by
influences from other sources, e.g., education, social convention,
etc.  So X or not-X is not necessarily an objective property of an
entity examined in isolation, but may reflect as well the conventions
society employs in its treatment of the entity.

|As for not arguing against Searle, that's quite
|deliberate.  The present discussion is just clarification of the structure
|of Searle's argument.

I don't think one understands Searle's (or anyone else's) argument
until one can both attack and defend it.

	Tom