Dennett and co. have, IMHO, utterly failed to explain consciousness, even those parts of consciousness I (as a noncomputationalist) think are strictly part of our wholly Turing-computable *intelligence* and could be programmed into an AI without special hardware.
Crocker is correct, however, in that Mr. Lanier's "That's not
sufficiently heartwarming... must be wrong!" does not constitute
sufficient disproof. I only wish to point out that it is a level of
flat assertion matched by Dennett, if not by more rigorous arguers such
as Hofstadter or for that matter Crocker.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://pobox.com/~sentience/AI_design.temp.html http://pobox.com/~sentience/sing_analysis.htmlDisclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you everything I think I know.