On 8/7/2011 4:42 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
That, as I keep saying, is the question. Assume that the bot can behave like a person but lacks consciousness. Then it would be possible to replace parts of your brain with non-conscious components that function otherwise normally, which would lead to you lacking some important aspect aspect of consciousness but being unaware of it.
Put that way it seems absurd. But what about lacking consciousness but *acting as if you were unaware* of it? The philosophical zombie says he's conscious and has an internal narration and imagines and dreams...but does he? Can we say that he must? If he says he doesn't, can we be sure he's lying? Even though I think functionalism is right, I think consciousness may be very different depending on how the internal functions are implemented. I go back to the example of having an inner narration in language (which most of us didn't have before age 4). I think Julian Jaynes was right to suppose that this was an evolutionary accident in co-opting the perceptual mechanism of language. In a sense all thought may be perception; it's just that some of it is perception of internal states.
Brent
This is absurd, but it is a corollary of the claim that it is possible to separate consciousness from function. Therefore, the claim that it is possible to separate consciousness from function is shown to be false. If you don't accept this then you allow what you have already admitted is an absurdity.
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