Re: More on qualia of consciousness and occam's razor

From: Eric Cavalcanti <eric.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 09:21:02 -0300

Hi Bruno,

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruno Marchal" <marchal.domain.name.hidden>

> You take the "box/brain" analogy to literally. If I rephrase the question
> as "I can see how the thing behaves, but what I want to know is 'is there
> consciousness there?' . Would you "still" say "But we already know
> that there are no consciousness -- so what the question is really
> asking?".
> Well my remark adds nothing in the sense that Eric Cavalcanti
> succeeds apparently to pinpoint the contradiction in Pete's post
> (through the use of Frank Jackson's colorblind Mary experiment).
> Nice piece of dialog. Actually I do think that the box/brain analogy
> is not so bad, once we agree to choose another "topology"
> for the information space, but for this I need the modal theory of
> knowledge S4 ...

I would love to read more about that. Where can I find a
good reference?

> Of course I mainly agree with Stathis here, and with Eric's
> assessment, but Stathis formulates it in just the way which
> makes people abusing the box analogy. Indeed, the only way
> to actually know/feel/experience the qualia is to "run" the right
> software, which really *defines* the owner.
> The choice of hardware makes no difference. The owner
> of the hardware makes no difference. This is because the owner
> is really defined by the (running) software.
> To be even more exact, there is eventually
> no need for running the software, because eventually the box
> itself is a construction of the mind, and is defined by the
> (possible) software/owner.
> That illustrates also that you cannot see "blue" as someone else
> sees "blue" by running the [someone else's software] on
> "your hardware", because if you run [someone else's software]
> on your hardware, you will just duplicate that someone-else,
> and your hardware will become [someone else's hardware!]
> And *you* will just disappear (locally).

Well, that's just where I guess we come to disagree... :)
I am still not sure I believe comp, so I am not
yet sure I agree that the hardware doesn't matter at all...
Or at least not in that strong sense that one can
expect to experience a copy of oneself elsewhere.
I am not even sure what 'one' means here...
So many doubts... :)

-Eric.
Received on Tue Feb 17 2004 - 07:23:13 PST