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From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Where might CR understanding come from (if it exists)
Message-ID: <3691@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 8 Apr 89 11:28:53 GMT
References: <826@htsa.uucp>
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 47

From article <826@htsa.uucp>, by fransvo@htsa.uucp (Frans van Otten):
" ...
" I can't follow you.  What do I mean when I say "I am hungry" ?
" 
"   1.  I am in need of food.
"   2.  I have a (subjective) feeling that I call "hungry".  This
"       feeling has been caused by an empty stomach, or by something
"       else.
" 
" Taken as (1), it is deniable.  I can have a hungry feeling without
" actually needing food.  Taken as (2), it is undeniable:  I *am*
" hungry.

Though I have reservations about (2), I think this is a good analogy.
One might say "I am hungry" to mean "Give me some food now" or to
announce an intention to raid the refrigerator.  If so, it's an
explanation of the demand or of the up-coming behavior.  As students of
human behavior, we might take the explanation seriously, and go about
the business of trying to put it in a rigorous way by trying to identify
a chemical hunger-need syndrome or a neuronal hunger-feeling syndrome.
That's step one.  Having done that, as step two, we could investigate
its truth.  Maybe for hunger-feeling it would have to be true, as you
say.  I don't think that's so clear.

But what about step one?  Does it have to succeed?  We're dealing
with a folk explanation of behavior.  Maybe it's just wrong.

Similarly consiousness.

"  Maybe this hungry feeling is caused by something else
" then an actual need for food, but I don't say anything about that.
" 
" Now when I say "I am conscious", I have a (subjective) feeling which
" I call "conscious".  With this statement, I don't say anything about
" what might have caused this feeling.

That's not what I meant by saying it was a theory.  I meant that
statements about consiousness are used ordinarily to explain or justify
behavior.  Folk theories are advanced.

" ... So where do we misunderstand eachother ?

Since you don't recognize the theoretical nature of humans' statements
about consciousness, you are prevented from entertaining the possibility
that the theories might be incorrect.

		Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu