Re: The difference between a 'chair' concept and a 'mathematical concept' ;)

From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 14:24:32 -0700

Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote:
>>On Oct 11, 5:11 am, Brent Meeker <meeke....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>But it isn't possible to determine by inspection that they are
>
> conscious.Are you claiming it's impossible in principle, or just that
>
>>>we don't know how?
>>
>>It may be impossible in principle (i.e. 1-person experience is
>>ex-hypothesi incommunicable) and we certainly don't know how to.
>>
>>David
>>
>
>
> The fact that conscious experience is intrinsically privately
> presented/delivered can be regarded as key evidence in any proposition as
> to its physics. Any real solution must, by definition, explain why that is
> so.
>
> Indeed if you imagine a world where consciousness is mundane they would
> expect it to be so. If this possibility exists what it means is that the
> attitude to scientific evidence has to change to suit the real world of
> scientific evidence... especially if consciousness in the form of
> observation by a scientist is to be demanded as the source of evidence on
> pain of being declared unscientific (which is what we currently do -
> unless you can eyeball it you're not being scientific).
>
> The subtlety with 'objective scientific evidence' is that ultimately it is
> delivered into the private experiences of indiividual scientists. Only
> agreement as to what is evidenced makes it 'objective'. So the privacy of
> the experience individuals is and always will be an intrinsic and
> unavoidable part of the whole process.
>
> If this is the case then there's a way around it - because in saying the
> last sentence I have been implicitly assuming that a human is doing the
> observing and therefore accepting tacitly all the limitations of that
> circumstance. Relax that constraint and what do you get? Either another
> biological life form is supplying evidence or a non-biological life-form
> is giving evidence of consciousness somehow.

Why a "life form"? Why not an instrument or a robot?

>
> A non-biological life-form offers the only really flexible and fully
> controllable and ethical option. How can this do the job, you ask? Isn't
> this a circular arument? You have to know you;ve built a conscious life
> form in oder that you get evidence to prove its consciousness?
>
> Not really... what it does is open up new options. In another world where
> ethics are different you'd experiment by grafting scientist's heads
> together so they could verify each other's experiences in some way. Plenty
> of scientists! Why not?! ... erm...welll...not really gonna fly is it?

Don't we "graft scientists heads together" now by speech, papers, symposia,...

> So the viable alternative is 'grafting' putative artifiacts together in
> 'cancellation bridges'

Huh??

>of one form or another and configure them in such a
> way as to report unambiguously the presence or absense of the results of
> the physics of experience doing its stuff. Merge 4 artificial scientists
> and get them to compare/contrast... and report....

So, for example, if we build a lot of different Mars rovers and they go to Mars and
they report back similar things we'll have evidence that they are conscious?

Brent Meeker

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Received on Wed Oct 11 2006 - 18:43:43 PDT

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