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 Davis) Message-ID: <492@mind.UUCP> Date: Mon, 9-Feb-87 14:28:40 EST Article-I.D.: mind.492 Posted: Mon Feb 9 14:28:40 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 11-Feb-87 07:39:08 EST Organization: Cognitive Science, Princeton University Lines: 55 Keywords: Consciousness, Evolution, Functional Explanation, Xref: watmath comp.ai:222 comp.cog-eng:59 Causality Summary: On the "how" vs. the "why" of consciousness References: <460@mind.UUCP> <1032@cuuxb.UUCP> <465@mind.UUCP> <2556@well.UUCP> <491@mind.UUCP> Paul Davis (davis@embl.bitnet) EMBL,postfach 10.22.09, 6900 Heidleberg, FRG wrote on mod.ai: > we see Harnad struggling with why's and not how's... > conciousness is a *biological* phenomenon... because > this is so, the question of *why* conciousness is used > is quite irrelevant in this context...[Davis cites Armstrong, > etc., on "conciousness as a means for social interaction"]... > conciousness would certainly seem to be here -- leave it to > the evolutionary biologists to sort out why, while we get on > with the how... I'm concerned ONLY with "how," not "why." That's what the TTT and methodological epiphenomenalism are about. When I ask pointedly about "why," I am not asking a teleological question or even an evolutionary one. [In prior iterations I explained why evolutionary accounts of the origins and "survival value" of consciousness are doomed: because they're turing-indistinguishable from the IDENTICAL selective-advantage scenario, minus consciousness.] My "why" is a logical and methodological challenge to inadequate, overinterpreted "how" stories (including evolutionary "just-so" stories, e.g., "social" ones): Why couldn't the objectively identical "how" features stand alone, without being conscious? What functional work is the consciousness itself doing, as opposed to piggy-backing on the real functional work? If there's no answer to that, then there is no justification for the conscious interpretation of the "how." [If we're not causal dualists, it's not even clear whether we would WANT consciousness to be doing any independent work. But if we wouldn't, then why does it figure in our functional accounts? -- Just give me the objective "how," without the frills.] > the mystery of the C-1: How can ANYTHING *know* ANYTHING at all? The problem of consciousness is not really the same as the problem of knowledge (although they're linked, since, until shown otherwise, only conscious devices have knowledge). To know X is not the same as to experience X. In fact, I don't think knowledge is a C-1-level phenomenon. [I know (C-2) THAT I experience pain, but does the cow know THAT she experiences pain? Yet she presumably does experience pain (C-1).] Moreover, "knowledge" is mired in epistemological and even ontological issues that cog-sci would do well to steer clear of (such as the difference between knowing X and merely believing X, with justification, when X is true). -- Stevan Harnad (609) - 921 7771 {allegra, bellcore, seismo, rutgers, packard} !princeton!mind!harnad harnad%mind@princeton.csnet