Re: Conscious of the hard problem

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Thu, 24 Jun 1999 21:17:48 -0500

Ron McClain wrote:
>
> The logical result of trying to impose that
> framework onto subjective phenomenon is functionalism, a version of
> behaviorism on steroids. The solution is to basically ignore the subjective
> phenomenon and explain what EVERYONE can see: The output, or
> actions of a conscious individual. That may be good cognitive science,
> but appears to me to be bad philosophy.

I disagree. I think that once you've explained my output and Chalmers' output and so on, then you've explained consciousness. Anything that's real, anything that we can pose a question about, and then write that question down, has obviously affected our behavior. Conversely, anything that doesn't affect our behavior, we don't know about.

-- 
           sentience@pobox.com          Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
        http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
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