On Tuesday, February 4, 2014 12:36:12 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote: > > On 2/4/2014 12:20 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > But I don't believe that. I think that consciousness is a necessary > aspect of intelligence, > > > OK. > > > and that is functionally observable. > > > It is not. Leibniz already understood this. You evacuate the mind-body > problem. No 3p observation can detect consciousness. It is pure 1p. We can > detect evidences that some entities behave as if they were conscious, but > materialists would not been tempted to eliminate it if it was observable. > > > "That" refers to intelligence. Which I think is observable. I think my > dogs are conscious because of their intelligent behavior. >
Would you say that it is possible for a baby to understand that dogs are conscious? How do you know that our understanding of the awareness of other creatures is because we deduce it intellectually by evaluating their behavior? Something like the wire monkey experiment shows us that an animal will recognize the furry object as being more like its mother than a wire object, even though there is no more mothering behavior. I submit that our estimation of the sentience of other creatures is almost entirely aesthetic, and that if anything we project intelligence onto the behavior of things/creatures/people who we like for aesthetic reasons. Craig > Brent > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
