cugini@icst-ecf.UUCP.UUCP (01/23/87)
> Stevan Harnad: > > ...When the dog's tooth is injured, > and it does the various things it does to remedy this -- inflamation > reaction, release of white blood cells, avoidance of chewing on that > side, seeking soft foods, giving signs of distress to his owner, etc. etc. > -- why do the processes that give rise to all these sequelae ALSO need to > give rise to any pain (or any conscious experience at all) rather > than doing the very same tissue-healing and protective-behavioral job > completely unconsciously? Why is the dog not a turing-indistinguishable > automaton that behaves EXACTLY AS IF it felt pain, etc, but in reality > does not? That's another variant of the mind/body problem, and it's what > you're up against when you're trying to justify interpreting physical > processes as conscious ones. Anything short of a convincing answer to > this amounts to mere hand-waving on behalf of the conscious interpretation > of your proposed processes. This seems an odd way to put it - why does X "need" to produce Y ? Why do spinning magnets "need" to generate electric currents? I don't think that's quite the right question to ask about causes and events - sounds vaguely anthrpomorphic to me. It's enough to say that, in fact, certain types of events (spinning magnets, active brains) do in fact cause, give rise to, certain other types of events (electric currents, experiences). Now, now, don't panic, I know that the epistemological justification for believing in the existence and causes of experiences (one's own and that of others) is quite different from that for electric currents. I tried to outline the epistemology in the longish note I sent a month or so ago (the one with events A1, B1, C1, which talked about brains as a more important criterion for consciousness than performance, etc.). Do I sense here the implicit premise that there must be an evolutionary explanation for the existence of consciousness? And that consciousness is a rationally justified concept iff such an evolutionary role for it can be found? But sez who? Consciousness may be as superflouous (wrt evolution) as earlobes. That hardly goes to show that it ain't there. The point is, given a satisfactory justification for believing that a) experiences exist and b) are (in the cases we know of) caused by the brain, I don't see why a "pro-consciousness" person should feel obligated to answer why this NEEDS to be so. I don't think it does NEED to be so. It just is so. John Cugini <Cugini@icst-ecf> ------