At 12:38 PM -0600 2/26/07, Harzem Peter wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 10:44 AM, Paul Brandon wrote:
Pigeons have been taught to report internal states, such as whether
they are being affected by a psychoactive drug. Can we say that
they are 'conscious' of being in that state?
Why, of course, Paul. (My cat is conscious of my being at
home. That is the only time he comes looking for me.
If not, what is missing beyond the tautological observation that
they are not human?
But, Paul, e.g. "X is not human" is not a tautological statement.
Peter
Point taken.
As Kipling said, you're a better logician than I am .....
The full argument I was referring to would be:
Only humans are conscious
Pigeons are not human
Therefore pigeons are not conscious.
This tells us nothing that we didn't already know about consciousness
(and little about pigeons ;-).
We need some data that demonstrates that only humans are conscious;
not simply the assertion.
--
The best argument against Intelligent Design is that fact that
people believe in it.
* PAUL K. BRANDON [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Psychology Dept Minnesota State University *
* 23 Armstrong Hall, Mankato, MN 56001 ph 507-389-6217 *
* http://krypton.mnsu.edu/~pkbrando/ *
---
To make changes to your subscription go to:
http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
