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From: dailey@frith.uucp (Chris Dailey)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Introspection
Message-ID: <1991Feb13.205452.3958@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
Date: 13 Feb 91 20:54:52 GMT
References: <1991Feb4.224101.18846@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <1574@pdxgate.UUCP>
Sender: news@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu
Organization: Michigan State University
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In article <1574@pdxgate.UUCP> erich@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Erich Stefan Boleyn) writes:
>mpdevine@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Michel P. Devine) writes:
[... much neat material by both authors deleted...]
>>                 ...On a related note, isn't it interesting that our medical
>>experts pursue the understanding of life solely from studying dead material?
>   It is an unfortunate carryover from the past...

I hope you gentlemen are not suggesting human vivisection ...  (Actually,
most any other type of vivisection would disgust me, as well.)

>>Perhaps that is why most hospitals are rotten places to go when one is sick...
>   Personally I think that most human technology is very slapstick...  with
>little elegance...  and medicine is near the top of my list (make that
>barbaric).

Artificial intelligence is at the top of mine.  (Please note humor.)

>>I think that introspection provides subjective and crucial information about
>>a process most of us are almost studiously ignoring.  Introspection is the 
>>*only* way to know for certain what is really going on in your brain, 
>>whether it agrees with any given theory or not.  
>   Yes, but so many people have fundamentally disagreed about how the
>human mind operates from introspection...  can we rely on their
>interpretations for real information that is not just useable in a social
>context?  I agree that introspection is useful, but one must be careful,
>it may well be that our internal states that we percieve don't well
>correspond to what's going on (assuming a mechanistic model, of course ;-),

...and may actually be contrary to what's going on.

>   Erich
>             "I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where it is."

Appropriate for all of us, I'd say.
--
Chris Dailey   dailey@(frith.egr|cps).msu.edu
    __  __  ___       | "A line in the sand." -- The Detroit News
 __/  \/  \/ __:>-    |
 \__/\__/\__/         | "Allein in der sand." -- me