> On Sep 15, 2015, at 12:37 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard <[email protected]> > wrote: > > If you mean the maxim it’s an interesting question since of course the > traditional problem of consciousness is how to verify something has > consciousness. Now unlike the positivists verification criteria Peirce > clearly thinks his pragmatic maxim can deal with metaphysical claims that are > useful. Exactly how to apply it here is unclear to me though. I think that at > best Peirce’s assertions about consciousness and swerve are only hypotheses.
One last thought before I go silent again for a few days. The obvious way of verifying consciousness is to ask people. While this isn’t perfect I’m not sure that means we can’t apply the maxim. Given Peirce’s thoroughgoing fallibilism we don’t need full certainty to verify something. With other animals typically the mirror test is used. However quickly we reach a point of ambiguity such that it seems we can’t verify consciousness. (Or rather we find ourselves unable to resist our doubts) Peirce’s hypothesis of self-control seems to run up against the problem of computational complexity such that it can appear an object is exercising self-control when it is not. Without addressing the classic philosophical problem of free will, I’ll just say that many toy robots today can appear to be self-aware when they are not. That suggests that Peirce’s test may be problematic from a third person perspective. And the appearance of self-control from inside within the free will debate goes back at least to Kant. So I’m not sure that gets us that far either. However again, the pragmatic maxim doesn’t imply certainty. In some cases it simply seems more likely than others. I’d say that when we have a hard time doubting the results of a test yet continue our inquiry that’s probably good enough to call it verified.
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
