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Originally posted by asaris
You argue that consciousness can't be a pure accident, but its not clear why that's the case. Surely a creature that acted exactly as if it were conscious would be just as good from an evolutionary standpoint as a creature that actually was conscious, right?
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Let me restate my argument more clearly:
1. Evolution can only "design" things when there is a selection pressure for it to work with.
2. There is a selection pressure for intelligence.
3. There is no selection pressure for sentience.
4. According to Searle, intelligence and sentience are totally separate things. Intelligence comes from the functional operation of the brain, sentience from "causal properties".
5. Therefore consciousness cannot have evolved.
6. We are conscious
7. We evolved
8. Therefore consciousness arose purely by accident.
Surely you are not going to trivialise consciousness by simply saying that it is just some weird accident on the part of Mother Nature?
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I would reject the hypothesis that this position entails what you call "bio-chauvinism". (Nice word, btw.) Certainly it's possible, as far as we know, for a silicon 'brain' to be conscious -- I don't know why it wouldn't be.
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Well, I was arguing against Searle, and Searle is certainly a bio-chauvinist. He insists that a silicon brain would not be conscious. (unless we installed it with the same “causal powers” of the brain. But that would have nothing to do with its operation.
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And I don't understand why you insist that the appearance of consciousness is consciousness. It's certainly possible for a creature to appear to be conscious and not actually be conscious. Of course, we have every epistemic right to believe that such a creature is conscious, but we could still be wrong about it.
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Well, this is of course what it all comes down to isn’t it.
I find it absurd to believe in zombies...people who talk and act and all the rest, just like us, but do not have any awareness. Bear in mind that these people will constantly refer to the experiences that they are having. Perhaps I could be accused of falling into the trap, which you talk about in the following paragraph, but I don’t think so. Chalmer’s paper that I linked to above is a good argument for this view, as is, I believe, my evolutionary argument.
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Finally, you criticize me, and to some extent rightly, for relying too much on common sense. It would be an interesting discussion, though probably one best held in another thread, how to use common sense in philosophy. But I would certainly be remiss if I thought our common sense intutions were an infallible guide to the nature of reality. But likewise, the fact that a theory that does violence to our common sense intutions is a good reason to believe it to be false. If an ethical theory told you that, in fact, killing was okay, that we be a good reason to reject the theory, right? I don't see that's it's all that different in philosophy of mind.
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Yes perhaps I should have made myself clearer here. What I meant was that we should see "common-sense" as a method for finding things out, not as a base of obvious conclusions.
In fact we have a name for the systematic usage of common sense in finding things out; it's called science.
But my point is many of the theories of science go against the
knowledge of common sense, while using the
method of common sense.
"The fact that a theory that does violence to our common sense intutions is a good reason to believe it to be false."
Very true. If we have two theories about something, then all things being equal the one, which appears to make most sense, should win out.
But the problem arises when things aren't equal. (e.g. Quantum Mechanics v.s. Classical Mechanics). Are we flexible enough to accept that things are less intuitive than we might have imagined (QM), or do we insist that, no, common sense must win out (Newton was completely correct after all!)
So perhaps you should just forgive me for this argument. Common sense is of course a strong guide to use in philosophy. Just as long as you don’t cling to it too strongly.
Now perhaps you may feel that I have sold you short. After all I only attacked the ideas of others, without being so brave as to put forward my own ideas (presumably to receive likewise treatment). I am aware of this. My view on this subject is quite a subtle one, and no single ‘-ism’ encapsulates what I believe. I had started writing down my ideas to post on this board as a new thread, a few weeks ago, but it remains unfinished. I didn’t want it to be unreadably long, and I also wanted to make my ideas clear. Perhaps I will return to it and finish it reasonably soon.