Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!dan-hankins
From: dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument
Message-ID: <16879@cup.portal.com>
Date: 8 Apr 89 20:16:21 GMT
References: <10992@bcsaic.UUCP>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 34

In article <880@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU> njahren@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU
(the hairy guy) writes:

>And isn't your behavioristic brushing of them aside tatamount to denying
>them as important aspects mentality?  And if you do choose to deny this,
>don't you come up with the problem that we _are_ conscious and
>intensional, and that that's why we're doing all this in the first place?

     No, actually I don't.  Consciousness and especially intentionality are
results of our human propensity for inferring cause-effect relationships
from events proximate in time and space.

     The facts are that there is a sensation of desire (or tension, or
whatever) followed by some behavior, followed by a lessening of that
sensation.  That desire causes behavior is inferred rather than known.  The
experience of the sensation of intentionality (or consciousness for that
matter) is passive, as are all sensations.

     It is as likely that some third cause results in both the feeling of
intentionality and the behavior (increasingly seen to be the result of
signal processing in the brain).

     For an example of this principle, consider lightning.  Does the flash
of light cause the thunder?  Or would it be more accurate to say that the
electrical discharge through the atmosphere causes both the flash of light
and the sound?

     Intentionality and consciousness are the flash, and behavior is the
thunder.


Dan Hankins

     This phone booth reserved for Clark Kent.