<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp@gmail.com> wrote:</span><br></div><div style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 16px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></div><div style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 16px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">> Apart from the scientific problem, the philosophical problem with</span><br></div><div style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif;"><div style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif;"><div
class="y_msg_container"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">> these theories is that they make consciousness substrate dependent, as</span><br><span style="font-size: 12pt;">> Brent and Gordon have been arguing, and that leads to absurdity. It</span><br><span style="font-size: 12pt;">> would mean that if the microtubules in your visual cortex could be</span><br><span style="font-size: 12pt;">> replaced with functional equivalents you would be blind but you would</span><br><span style="font-size: 12pt;">> not notice you were blind and you would behave as if you had normal</span><br><span style="font-size: 12pt;">> vision.</span><br><br><span style="font-size: 12pt;">If you are saying here that consciousness cannot be substrate dependent then that leads to </span>the absurdity of multiple realizability. As one philosopher observed, we could in principle train a massive group of pigeons to peck in a manner analogous to how the brain
supposedly acts like a digital computer. We could say a peck = 1, and a non-peck = 0. Would that group of pigeons really be a mind?</div><div class="y_msg_container"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br>Multiple-realizability is a sort of unspoken doctrine here on ExI with respect to matters of the mind, at least among many of us here. I have problems with it.<br><br><a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/multiple-realizability/">http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/multiple-realizability/</a><br><br></span></div><div class="y_msg_container"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Gordon </span></div> </div> </div> </div></body></html>