--- On Sat, 11/15/08, Ed Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > With regard to the second notion, >that conscious phenomena are not subject to scientific explanation, there is >extensive evidence to the contrary. The prescient psychological writings of >William James, and Dr. Alexander Luria’s famous studies of the effects of >variously located bullet wounds on the minds of Russian soldiers after World >War II, both illustrate that human consciousness can be scientifically >studied. The effects of various drugs on consciousness have been >scientifically studied.
Richard's paper is only about the "hard" question of consciousness, that which distinguishes you from a P-zombie, not the easy question about mental states that distinguish between being awake or asleep. I think the reason that the hard question is interesting at all is that it would presumably be OK to torture a zombie because it doesn't actually experience pain, even though it would react exactly like a human being tortured. That's an ethical question. Ethics is a belief system that exists in our minds about what we should or should not do. There is no objective experiment you can do that will tell you whether any act, such as inflicting pain on a human, animal, or machine, is ethical or not. The only thing you can measure is belief, for example, by taking a poll. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
