[ExI] common sense

[Gordon Swobe]

--- On Wed, 3/3/10, Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com> wrote:

>> We can quite easily reduce mental phenomena
>> epistemically without reducing the same phenomena
>> ontologically. I mean here that we can understand mental
>> phenomena in scientific terms of neurological causes and
>> effects without abandoning the common sense notion that
>> mental phenomena have an irreducibly subjective ontology.
> 
> We can perhaps. But why ever should we?

We should for the sake of saving the notion of "common sense". 

> Let us take a computer specialised in... examining
> Turing-test candidates. Let us say that its performance are equal or
> superior to that of human examiners. Let us say that it is instructed
> to decide whether it is itself a good candidate or not. If its answer
> is "yes",  as far as I am concerned it is by definition as conscious
> as yourself or myself (see the paradox of philosophical zombies wrongly
> persuaded to be conscious, and subvocalising, firing synapses, taking
> attitudes, etc., to this effect).
> 
> You have obviously faith-based reasons to believe
> otherwise

Nah, I have no "faith-based reasons". 

I just happen to know a little bit about how to program computers to make them look conscious. 

In pseudo-code:

If input equals "Given that your performance seems equal to that of a human, do you have a mind?" then output "Yes indeed, I have a mind just like Stefano has a mind."

Call me crazy, Stefano, but somehow I think that code above does not really give the computer a mind like you have a mind. What do you think?

PS. Shhh! The subject of conscious minds has become taboo here on ExI. We're not supposed to talk about such things.

-gts