Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!princeton!mind!harnad From: harnad@mind.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.cog-eng Subject: Re: More on Minsky on Mind(s) (Reply to Laws) Message-ID: <491@mind.UUCP> Date: Mon, 9-Feb-87 13:33:49 EST Article-I.D.: mind.491 Posted: Mon Feb 9 13:33:49 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 11-Feb-87 07:38:18 EST References: <460@mind.UUCP> <1032@cuuxb.UUCP> <465@mind.UUCP> <2556@well.UUCP> <490@mind.UUCP> Organization: Cognitive Science, Princeton University Lines: 92 Keywords: Consciousness, Illusion, Appearances, Experiences Summary: To deny that things are as they appear is not to deny that things appear as they appear, and the existence of appearance is the problem of consciousness Xref: watmath comp.ai:221 comp.cog-eng:58 Ken Laws wrote on mod.ai: > I'm not so sure that I'm conscious... I'm not sure I do experience > the pain because I'm not sure what "I" is doing the experiencing This is a tough condition to remedy. How about this for a start: The inferential story, involving "I" and objects, etc. (i.e., C-2) may have the details wrong. Never mind who or what seems to be doing the experiencing of what. The question of C-1 is whether there is any experience going on at all. That's not a linguistic matter. And it's something we presumably share with speechless, unreflective cows. > on the other hand, I'm not sure that silicon systems > can't experience pain in essentially the same way. Neither am I. But there's been a critical inversion of the null hypothesis here. From the certainty that there's experience going on in one privileged case (the first one), one cannot be too triumphant about the ordinary inductive uncertainty attending all other cases. That's called the other-minds problem, and the validity of that ineference is what's at issue here. The substantive problem is characterizing the functional capacities of artificial and natural systems that warrant inferring they're conscious. > Instead of claiming that robots can be conscious, I am just as > willing to claim that consciousness is an illusion and that I am > just as unconscious as any robot. If what you're saying is that you feel nothing (or, if you prefer, "no feeling is going on") when I pinch you, then I must of course defer to your higher authority on whether or not you are really an unconscious robot. If you're simply saying that some features of the experience of pain and how we describe it are inferential (or "linguistic," if you prefer) and may be wrong, I agree, but that's beside the point (and a C-2 matter, not a C-1 matter). If you're saying that the contents of experience, even its form of presentation, may be illusory -- i.e., the way things seem may not be the way things are -- I again agree, and again remind you that that's not the issue. But if you're saying that the fact THAT there's an experience going on is an illusion, then it would seem that you're either saying something (1) incoherent or (in MY case, in any event) (2) false. It's incoherent to say that it's illusory that there is experience because the experience is illusory. If it's an experience, it's an experience (rather than something else, say, an inert event), irrespective of its relation to reality or to any interpretations and inferences we may wrap it in. And it's false (of me, at any rate) that there's no experience going on at all when I say (and feel) I have a toothache. As for the case of the robot, well, that's what's at issue here. [Cartesian exercise: Try to apply Descartes' method of doubt -- which so easily undermines "I have a toothache" -- to "It feels as if I have a toothache." This, by the way, is to extend the "cogito" (validly) even further than its author saw it as leading. You can doubt that things ARE as they seem, but you can't doubt that things SEEM as they seem. And that's the problem of experience (of appearances, if you will). Calling them "illusions" just doesn't help.] > One way out is to assume that neurons themselves are aware of pain Out of what? The other-minds problem? This sounds more like an instance of it than a way out. (And assumption hardly seems to amount to solution.) > How do we know that we experience pain? I'm not sure about the "I," and the specifics of the pain and its characterization are negotiable, but THAT there is SOME experience going on when "I" feel "pain" is something that anyone but an unconscious robot can experience for himself. And that's how one "knows" it. > I propose that... our "experience" or "awareness" of pain is > an illusion, replicable in all relevant respects by inorganic systems. Replicate that "illusion" -- design devices that can experience the illusion of pain -- and you've won the battle. [One little question: How are you going to know whether the device really experiences that illusion, rather than your merely being under the illusion that it does?] As to inorganic systems: As ever, I think I have no more (or less) reason to deny that an inorganic system that can pass the TTT has a mind than I do to deny that anyone else other than myself has a mind. That really is a "way out" of the other-minds problem. But inorganic systems that can't pass the TTT... -- Stevan Harnad (609) - 921 7771 {allegra, bellcore, seismo, rutgers, packard} !princeton!mind!harnad harnad%mind@princeton.csnet