[ExI] Wernicke's aphasia and the CRA.

[Alfio Puglisi]

On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 8:52 PM, Gordon Swobe <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- On Sat, 12/12/09, Alfio Puglisi <alfio.puglisi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Then we roughly agree, except that I take the opposite
> > default position: that non-organic AI will have
> > consciousness unless proved otherwise, the same criterion we
> > apply to biological intelligence.
>
> That position will lead to panpsychism - the idea that all matter has
> consciousness


Well, a wooden desk, while biologically-derived, does not show intelligent
behaviour, so I don't assign it much consciousness either. The same for a
metallic desk.



> -- unless you find some way to justify one thing as conscious and another
> as not without using biological consciousness as the measure!
>

You nailed it - the problem is grounding consciousness on being biological.
After all, there are many biological things that do not show intelligent
behaviour, like most plants.
In our experience, the only conscious things is a human brain, or perhaps an
animal brain. This will justify shifting your Bayesian priors towards the
biological, but it's far from giving absolute certainty.



> Panpsychism is not an indefensible position, and it does refute Searle's.
> It's just not very popular.
>
> -gts
>


Alfio
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