From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Fri Dec 17 1999 - 12:44:20 MST
'What is your name?' 'John Clark.' 'Do you deny having written the
following?':
> Dan Fabulich <daniel.fabulich@yale.edu> Wrote:
>
> >Phenomenologist: Do I believe it? Just a moment while I introspect.
> >Yes, it turns out that I do believe it.
>
> Introspection? Bah Humbug! Every one of your arguments against the existence of
> qualia could be used with equal success (or lack thereof) against the existence of
> introspection.
Er, <shuffles his feet> I hadn't ACTUALLY intended to send that,
explaining the abrupt halt about a paragraph in, when I decided it
wouldn't be a good idea after all. :)
In fact, I'd thought I'd cancelled it, and only knew that I hadn't when
you'd responded to it. That's what you get for trying to post to the list
immediately after a biomedical engineering exam, which came immediately
after an all-nighter.
However... "<beep> Please wait, loading program" is something we're
accustomed to thinking a zombie could reasonably say. Couldn't a zombie
therefore say "Excuse me while I introspect?"
> One more thing, you haven't explained a very common phenomena, why does
> everybody thinks they're conscious if they really are not. Just calling it an illusion
> is no answer unless you're able to tell me the mechanics of it. How does the
> illusion work? And besides, even an illusion is something, it exists.
I can't explain why there's an Illusion, only why there's an "illusion;"
that is, I can't explain why you have the qualia of Experiencing an
Illusion (in the Cartesian sense) but I CAN explain why you do everything
a zombie does when he is "deceived" (in the functionalist sense), ie,
acting in every way as if he was Deceived. No explanation can be provided
for why you have an Illusion, because you don't.
I gave some evolutionary possibilities in another post... to refine/
summarize them a bit, remember that, if I'm right, evolution CAN'T evolve
qualia at all. However, it is well regarded that behaving as if you have
Emotions is evolutionarily advantageous for reasons too various to
recount. See Pinker's _How the Mind Works_, for example, or just about
any book on evolutionary psych. I'd also assume that having us behave as
if our Emotions don't exist would ruin the point, assuming that we didn't
replace them with some variant, like "emotions." On account of this, you
get bio-machines which act in every way as if they have Emotions, even
"believing" it. But they don't Believe it, even if they "believe" that
they Believe it.
None of this will seem at all compelling to you if you you take qualia to
be a first principle. I'm continuing to think on this matter.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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