[ExI] The symbol grounding problem in strong AI

[Gordon Swobe]

> I don't have one scrap of information that Mr. Foreman was 
> conscious either before or after that blow

You've fallen into that solipsistic rabbit hole that I mentioned. 

Like most people I think Foreman had consciousness. Then the dancing butterfly stung like a bee, indirectly causing him to have no consciousness. Seems to me that something interesting to neuroscience happened at that moment. 

Crick (1994) proposed tentatively that the neuronal correlates of consciousness may be found in neuronal firings in the 40hz range in networks of the thalamocortical system, specifically in connections between the thalamus and layers four and six of the cortex. Searle applauds this sort of research program (he references Crick's hypothesis in his own paper on consciousness) because on his view we need to understand how the brain does the consciousness trick before we can understand how it does the symbol grounding trick. 

-gts