[mod.ai] Historical Perspective on the Consciousness Debate

sas@BFLY-VAX.BBN.COM.UUCP (03/10/87)

I couldn't help noticing that this debate has its antecedants:

"Whatever does this, reasons: and if a machine produces the effects of
reason, I see no more ground for denying it the reasoning power,
because it is unconscious, than I see for refusing Mr. Babbage's engine
the title of a calculating machine on the same grounds."

From T.H. Huxley's 1871 essay Mr. Darwin's Critics - discussing whether
a hunting dog reasons.  While this essay is largely concerned with the
origins of the species, it examines the arguments for the necessity of
the special creation of human consciousness (one of Wallace's key
reservations).  Examining some of the anti-evolutionary arguments shows
just how shocking Freud's emphasis on the subconscious would be.

					Seth