Lexicon of Arguments

Philosophical and Scientific Issues in Dispute
 
[german]


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Theses I
Theses II

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I 83
Robot/Zombie/Mind/Brain/Searle: example: imagine your brain is starting to change in a way that leads to a gradual connection. You then implant silicon chips. In the end your whole brain is replaced by such chips.
A logical possibility, which cannot be excluded with a priori reasons alone, is that one continues to have all kinds of thoughts, experiences, memories etc. >Zombies, >computer model.
I 84
Variant: you notice in the course that the area of your conscious experience becomes smaller and smaller, but that this has no influence on your external behavior. (Also not to be excluded a priori). You want to shout: "I can't see anything at all; I'm totally blind." But you hear your voice say, "I see a red object in front of me."
In these thought experiments, it is important to always think them through from the point of view of the first person. One loses consciousness, but receives the same behavior.
I 84/85
3rd variant: the chips do not cause any change in your spiritual life, but they become increasingly incapable of translating your thoughts, feelings and intentions into actions.
The wit of these three variations is to illustrate the causal relationships.
In the first case, the silicon chips have causal forces equivalent to those of the brain.
In the second case, the mediation between the mind and the behavioral patterns was interrupted, the chips are not duplicates of the causal forces of the brain, but only duplicates of certain of the input output functions of the brain.
I 86
In the third case, the person concerned would have the same spiritual life, but the spiritual phenomena would no longer be expressed in behavior.
What is the philosophical significance of these three thought experiments? What exactly is the importance of behavior for the concept of mind?
But ontologically, the phenomena in question, with all their essential characteristics, can exist in complete independence from any output behavior.
Most philosophers whom I have criticized would accept the following two statements:
1. The brain causes conscious mental phenomena.
2. There is some kind of logical or conceptual connection between conscious mental phenomena and external behavior (SearleVs).
However, we have shown that these two are not compatible with the following statements:
I 87
3. The ability of the brain to cause consciousness is conceptually different from its ability to produce motor behavior. A system could have consciousness without behavior and behavior without consciousness.
We can call this "the principle of independence from consciousness and behavior". Therefore, behavior is not a necessary condition for the existence of the spiritual.
The ontology of the spiritual is essentially an ontology of the first person.
It is merely a swollen formulation that every state of mind must be someone's state of mind.
I 88
Robot Example: there is a wedge between mind states and behavior.
>Consciousness, >Artificial consciousness, cf. >Artificial Intelligence, >Robots.

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