X-Message-Number: 4114
From: 
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 12:58:23 -0500
Subject: SCI. CRYONICS Minsky

Minsky's excerpt (#4108) was mostly irrelevant for this audience, since most
of us (I think) are materialists and reductionists (in a broad sense). He was
mostly beating a dead horse; as far as I can tell, old-fashioned dualists are
rare these days. 

But where he was relevant, I think he was off the mark, because he seems to
think "consciousness" is just a matter of data processing.

It seems self-evident to me (after many years of thought) that the ground of
being--what separates life-as-we-know-it from robotics--is the capacity for
FEELING or subjectivity. My definition of consciousness--admittedly a vague
or first-approximation definition--is that it is the integration of feeling
and computing.  

A "robot" (whether carbon-based or silicon-based or anything else) presumably
might be able to  inspect parts or aspects of itself with other parts or
aspects, hence could be "conscious" of itself in Minsky's sense. That is not
the question or the problem. The question is what aspect of
anatomy/physiology gives rise to the subjective condition, pleasure/pain etc.
(Of course Minsky is right that this fundamental question, among others, has
been almost universally ignored until very recently.)

It is also possible that feeling may turn out to be an easier problem than
some of the others in brain physiology--but it remains by far the most
important one. Understanding feeling has enormous implications for all of
psychology and philosophy and for the world views of people generally.

Finally, I think philosophers create many of their own problems by torturing
language. An example is the "paradox" of the Liar and related
pseudo-problems. I think I'll separate this into another posting. Let me just
say here that I seem to go further than Minsky in rationalism/materialism; I
do not believe that ANY areas of reality have (so far at least) been shown to
be beyond scientific investigation and potential understanding.

Robert Ettinger


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