On Jun 14, 2:08 pm, Torgny Tholerus <tor....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> If the rock does *not* know anything, *but* the rock behaves as if it
> knows it, then it is reasonable to say that "the rock knows it".
Ah, but of course it is *not* reasonable to say this. You account is
an 'action-only' account. Consequently, it is 'reasonable' in such an
account to say only that the rock *acts* in a certain way. You are
falling into a massive category error in appropriating an outcome such
as 'knowing', that supervenes on 'sensing', the prerequisite of
action, to a partial 'action-only' account. Such 'action-only'
accounts are abstractions mediated by mental constructs - they are
*not* the reality to which they (partially) refer: if they were, such
a reality would be posited as 'relating' in the absence of 'sensing',
and thus 'knowing' would be cut out at the start. But ask yourself:
are the semantics of a 'reality' that self-relates without self-
sensing coherent? Can you 'react' to me without 'sensing' me? If
not, then neither can the fundamental components on which you
supervene.
BTW, you are able to fall prey to such perceptual errors only because
your own mental activity supervenes on a sense-action substrate, like
the rest of us. Get used to it!
David
> Quentin Anciaux skrev:> 2007/6/14, Torgny Tholerus <tor....domain.name.hidden>:
>
> >> If a rock shows the same behavior as a human being, then you should be able
> >> to use the same words ("know", believe", "think") to describe this
> >> behaviour.
>
> > If the rock know something and it behaves like it knows it, then it is
> > conscious.
>
> If the rock does *not* know anything, *but* the rock behaves as if it
> knows it, then it is reasonable to say that "the rock knows it".
>
> --
> Torgny Tholerus
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Received on Thu Jun 14 2007 - 09:30:37 PDT