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- Xref: sparky comp.ai.philosophy:7414 sci.philosophy.tech:4991
- Path: sparky!uunet!portal!lll-winken!overload.lbl.gov!agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!warwick!uknet!nessie!db.mcc.ac.uk!zlsiida
- From: zlsiida@fs1.mcc.ac.uk (dave budd)
- Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
- Subject: Re: Searle on animal consciousness
- Message-ID: <zlsiida.852@fs1.mcc.ac.uk>
- Date: 26 Jan 93 16:53:24 GMT
- References: <1993Jan24.024230.5977@sophia.smith.edu> <dpn2.232.727891709@po.CWRU.Edu> <1993Jan25.004754.10876@psych.toronto.edu> <dpn2.239.727932872@po.CWRU.Edu>
- Sender: news@nessie.mcc.ac.uk (Usenet News System)
- Organization: Manchester Computing Centre
- Lines: 21
-
- In article <dpn2.239.727932872@po.CWRU.Edu> dpn2@po.CWRU.Edu (Damien P. Neil) writes:
-
- >My personal opinion is that there is no current way to _prove_ that any
- >particular organism is concious or unconcious. Therefore, the best policy is
- >to assume that anything that _acts_ concious (i.e. conforms to our views of
- >our own conciousness), _is_ concious. I have seen my cat appear to express
- >happiness, desire, fear, and other emotions. Therefore, while it is possible
- >that my cat is no more concious that my computer, I assume that it is in
- >fact concious.
-
- I'm not at all convinced that emotions have anything much to do with the
- type of consciousness we're discussing here. I feel they're largely sub-
- conscious (I don't mean they operate in or emanate from "the subconscious",
- just that they're not involved in consciousness). Emotion could be how we
- managed to stay alive before we had thought, and it's thought that is
- central to consciousness: the ability to abstract ideas from phenomena, the
- idea of a self, and so on. The ability to plan may be a good benchmark for
- consciousness: I think dogs can do this, and cats; goldfish probably not, etc
-
- Actually, Occam wore a beard: philosophers kept borrowing his razor
- Dave Budd, MCC, Oxford Rd, Manchester, England (44|0)61-275-6033
-