[extropy-chat] effing

[gts]

On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 12:57:10 -0500, Brent Allsop <allsop at extropy.org>  
wrote:


>> Imagine a person who had this sort of "blind-sight" for all his senses,
>> such that he could hear without experiencing sound, taste without
>> experiencing flavor, feel without experiencing tactile sensations, etc.
>> This person would seem no different from a normal person. If you
>> encountered him on the street you would think he was just like you, but
>> unlike you he would have no inner life.
>
> No, he would not be exactly like us.  He wouldn't be trying to figure out
> what phenomenal properties were.

He might know about them but only by hear-say, like a blind man has heard  
about color but has no idea what it's like to experience color. He would  
be like our neuroscientist Mary trapped in a black and white world, but  
worse.

> And once you looked at his
> brain, you would see that he does not have whatever the neural correlates
> are that we have that have phenomenal properties. Right?

Given that he has blind-sight, I would suspect that the neural correlates  
do exist in his brain, but that his brain lacks the connection between  
those correlates and that part of the brain that manifests conscious  
experience. Apparently a part of his brain sees and experiences qualia but  
he has no conscious awareness of that qualia.

I'm reluctant even to say he has consciousness, which I have defined as  
awareness of awareness. He is aware but not aware of his awareness, thus  
not conscious.

> But other than this - he could be like us.  That is, after all, what an
> abstract unconscious computer is.

Right.

-gts