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