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From: harnad@mind.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: More on Minsky on Mind(s)
Message-ID: <490@mind.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 9-Feb-87 09:48:28 EST
Article-I.D.: mind.490
Posted: Mon Feb  9 09:48:28 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Feb-87 07:37:40 EST
References: <460@mind.UUCP> <1032@cuuxb.UUCP> <465@mind.UUCP> <2556@well.UUCP>
Organization: Cognitive Science, Princeton University
Lines: 32
Keywords: Consciousness, throwing, command buffer, evolution, foresight
Summary: No objective account of planning for the future can give an independent causal role to consciousness, so why bother?
Xref: watmath comp.ai:220 comp.cog-eng:57



wcalvin@well.UUCP (William Calvin), Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
writes:

>	Rehearsing movements may be the key to appreciating the brain
>	mechanisms [of consciousness and free will]

But WHY do the functional mechanisms of planning have to be conscious?
What does experience, awareness, etc., have to do with the causal
processes involved in the fanciest plan you may care to describe? This
is not a teleological why-question I'm asking (as other contributors
have mistakenly suggested); it is a purely causal and functional one:
Every one of the internal functions described for a planning,
past/future-oriented device of the kind Minsky describes (and we too
could conceivably be) would be physically, causally and functionally EXACTLY
THE SAME -- i.e., would accomplish the EXACT same things, by EXACTLY the same
means -- WITHOUT being interpreted as being conscious. So what functional
work is the consciousness doing? And if none, what is the justification
for the conscious interpretation of any such processes (except in
my own private case -- and of course that can't be claimed to the credit of
Minsky's hypothetical processes)? [As to "free will" -- apart from the aspect
that is redundant with the consciousness-problem [namely, the experience,
surely illusory, of free will], I sure wouldn't want to have to defend a
functional blueprint for that...]
 

-- 

Stevan Harnad                                  (609) - 921 7771
{allegra, bellcore, seismo, rutgers, packard}  !princeton!mind!harnad
harnad%mind@princeton.csnet