On 24 February 2014 06:27, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > On Monday, February 24, 2014, David Nyman <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On 22 February 2014 05:59, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]>wrote: >> >> If we make a bet we can never settle, since the idea is that if the >>> replacement is technically perfect the subject's behaviour will be >>> normal, and behaviour includes displays of emotion and verbal >>> descriptions of internal states. >>> >> >> It would be interesting to speculate what fading qualia would be like in >> our own case, though. Would we hear ourselves continue to refer to qualia >> that we no longer possessed? Perhaps that's as near as we can come to a >> reductio of the whole idea. However, if I've grasped the way comp >> formulates this, it becomes inconsistent to suspect any correct and >> truthful machine of referring to qualia that it does not "in fact" possess >> in some distinct sense. >> > > John Searle in one of his papers proposes that if our brain were being > gradually replaced we would find ourselves losing qualia while declaring > that everything was normal, and being unable to make any protest to the > contrary. This would imply that we think with something other than our > brain, a soul equivalent, and that in certain situations the brain and this > soul equivalent can become decoupled. > > So he's either suggesting we'd lose them and be unable to articulate the fact, or that we'd lose them and wouldn't know it..? The first one seems ridiculous. If we knew we were losing qualia, whatever that would be like, surely we would be able to say so? Although I'm not sure how one could lose qualia, what does that mean? Surely it isn't like the artist in Oliver Sacks' book who lost the ability to see colours? He knew he'd lost the ability even though he couldn't imagine what seeing colours was like. So he knew he'd lost something, and could say so, but couldn't bring to mind what the thing he'd lost was like. I don't really ujnderstand how one could lose qualia and not know it. Or is the point that there's no longer anyone there to know it - a philosophical zombie? -- 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.
