Le 22-mai-05, à 08:27, Lee Corbin a écrit :
> But the familiar first sentence just sends me into orbit:
>
> The hard problem of consciousness, according to
> David Chalmers, is explaining why and how
> experience is generated by certain particular
> configurations of physical stuff.
>
> Just how the devil do you all you Chalmerites expect
> that the world could have been any different in this
> regard than it is???
>
> Do you imagine that it's possible that we could go to
> another star, and encounter beings who discoursed with
> us about every single other thing, yet denied that they
> had consciousness, and professed that they had no idea
> what we were talking about? Yes or No! I want an answer.
> Do you think that this *could* happen someday?
No. But that does not solve the problem. Even Feigenbaum's Eliza was
able to talk on consciousness.
Let me try to put it in another way.
1) Do you agree it is wrong to torture a sensible being? (and right to
send someone who does that in jail) ?
2) Do you agree there is nothing wrong to torture a sculpture or a doll?
Now japanese, I have read, makes cleverer dolls who simulate quite well
"being tortured", or "looking as being sensible", but of course they
are just zombie, not more clever than Feigenbaum's Eliza.
But they makes progress. The mind-body problem is: at which stage of
the progress should we send a doll's torturer in jail?
Should we wait for the doll being able to win a trial in court? Even
women in many countries are not yet able to do that, you know.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Sun May 22 2005 - 02:51:49 PDT