RobinZ comments on Open Thread: May 2010, Part 2 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Kevin 20 May 2010 07:30PM

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 25 May 2010 06:06:38PM *  1 point [-]

Dennet doesn't know that he doesn't belief in consciousness. But he doesn't believe in qualia. I interpret that as not believing in consciousness. And, the way he tries to explain consciousness indicates that he thinks that if you explain a system's input-output behavior, you've explained everything about the system. This also implies that there is no phenomena other than input-output to be explained; this implies there is no such thing as consciousness.

(Asking what a philosopher "believes" is a tricky question, since analysis usually show many important propositions that their writings imply both belief and disbelief of. This applies to all people, of course; it's just more problematic in philosophers.)

If you want to understand how someone can hold the positions they do, you will have to understand that they are not confusing cognition, action or perception with consciousness.

My point is that they are. They think that explaining the perception, cognition, and action is all they need to worry about, and all else is mysticism.

Comment author: RobinZ 25 May 2010 06:35:01PM 2 points [-]

Taboo "qualia" and "consciousness". You are speaking with great confidence in a discussion involving philosophical terms, and this is always a mistake if you have not already unambiguously defined these terms. And unambiguous definitions of philosophical terms are always controversial, and always in my experience lead to argument. Rationalist taboo, please.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 26 May 2010 08:01:01PM -1 points [-]

AI and rationality should then also be taboo. Unless you can unambiguously define them.

Comment author: RobinZ 26 May 2010 08:31:57PM 2 points [-]

With respect to this forum:

  • I can see a lot of possible benefits to creating a computer program capable of producing good solutions to any arbitrarily selected real-world problem, and I agree that the secondary meaning of "morally-correct" implicit in the word "good" makes this task even more difficult than it already appears to be.
  • It is fairly obvious from the many examples of high-g people spiraling off into ridiculous positions that it takes much more than smarts to be able to reliably and accurately figure out what is going on and make plans, and it would be useful (and entertaining, if I'm honest) to know what kind of errors I am likely to make and what methods I may be neglecting when it comes to figuring out what is going on and making plans.

That said, I should have made it clear how narrow the scope of my request was: I have no problem with colloquial use of the term "consciousness" under ordinary circumstances. I requested the restriction in this case specifically because this discussion hinges on details of the definition which are frequently perceived as obvious in contradictory ways by different participants. Tabooing the term avoids that tar pit.

Comment author: thomblake 27 May 2010 07:19:33PM 1 point [-]

rationality should then also be taboo. Unless you can unambiguously define [it].

what do we mean by rationality does a pretty good job of that. Though it should be noted that the notion of tabooing a term is for a particular situation where there is confusion / disagreement involving the term in question, and so "AI" at least is not worth tabooing in response to the parent comment.

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