On Saturday, April 4, 2015, meekerdb <[email protected] <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','[email protected]');>> wrote:
> On 4/3/2015 2:38 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > > > On 4 Apr 2015, at 7:32 am, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 4/2/2015 4:18 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > I think the argument I present does not depend on any fact about the > world (although going from the general case of what I call > functionalism to what Putnam called machine-state functionalism and > you call comp does depend on the physical CT being true). It depends > on a very basic operational definition of consciouness: that you know > it if you are conscious and you realise if there is a large enough > change in your consciousness. If you don't accept this operational > definition then I can find no meaning in the word "consciousness". > > > I don't understand how that applies to someone who, for example, is > red-green colorblind. Aren't they partial-zombies by your definition? > They may come to realize that they don't distinguish the full spectrum, > just as we realize we don't see infrared. Supppose the colorblind person > used to see colors but lost the ability (as my mother did after cataract > surgery)? She realized it by noticing that things that used to be colorful > weren't anymore. But like the person born colorblind, she didn't directly > experience a qualia of being colorblind. > > > She noticed a difference and there was also an objective change in her > ability to discriminate between a colours. A partial zombie would not > notice a difference and there would be no test that could find a difference. > > > But what does it mean to say she noticed a difference? Was the "noticing" > a perception of a difference, or was it just remembering that grass and > roses aren't named by the same color. The latter could be "noticed" by > someone who had never had color vision (and was in fact well known to my > father who was red-green colorblind all his life). If the "noticing" was > just a fact learned in the way anyone might learn a 3p fact, then I think > that would still leave my mother a partial zombie by your definition. > If you can think of a case where there could be a change that would not be noticed then that's not the example to use. We lose neurons every day and perhaps there is a subtle change in our perceptions as a result, but nobody notices. The example to use in the thought experiment is where the change in qualia would be large enough that the subject would definitely notice. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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/d/optout.
