Platt, Case -- [Platt quoting from "Introducing Consciousness" by David Papineau and Howard Selina, Icon Books]:
> "Consciousness is widely viewed as the last frontier of science. > Modern science may have split the atom and solved the mystery > of life, but it has yet to explain the source of conscious feelings." Actually, I found the authors' analysis quite illuminating. Not only is it in simple English (for Case), it effectively refutes the notion of inanimate (objective) consciousness: "The reason for starting with examples rather than definitions is that no objective, scientific explanation seems able to capture the essence of consciousness. "For example, suppose we try to define consciousness in terms of some characteristic psychological role that all conscious states play - in influencing decisions, perhaps, or in conveying information about our surroundings. "Or we might try to pick out conscious states directly in physical terms, as involving the presence of certain kinds of chemicals in the brain, say. "Any such attempted objective definition seems to leave out the essential ingredient. Such definitions fail to explain why conscious states feel a certain way. "Couldn't we in principle build a robot which satisfied any such scientific definition, but which had no real feelings? "Imaging a computer-brained robot whose internal states register "information" about the world and influence the robot's 'decisions'. Such design specifications alone don't seem to guarantee that the robot will have any real feelings. "The lights may be on, but is anyone at home? ..." Thanks for suggesting this link, Platt. I may even be persuaded to read "Introducing Consciousness". Do you have any background on the authors? Are they qualified to speak for Science? Regards, Ham moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
