Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos  But I do have a theory: I think our inner experiences are due to brain function. The alternate theory is that our inner experiences are not due to brain function. Now which of those theories is likely to progress more in the coming years?
~~ Paul |
Come on - you can do better than that! Everyone here has a shallow theory like that!
The alternative that you pose is also vacuous. The TV receiver analogy may not be perfect, but it does not reduce to your alternative. There are many subtle variants available as well.
The thing that gets me about papers such as the "Multiple drafts model", is that they don't read like normal scientific papers at all - more like religious essays! They seem more about trying to persuade the reader of a point of view based on the minimum of evidence, rather than providing a real model of consciousness.
What I find distasteful, is not so much that vague, untestable theories of consciousness are proposed, but that these are touted as if they were self-evident truths, and any observations that don't fit - such as Ψ - are discarded as a result.
Ian thinks it would be feasible to create an android that would behave in a human way, but not be conscious - not experience qualia. I am beginning to think that maybe all our thoughts are about qualia. Traditionally we think of the colour red as an example of a qualia, but if, for example, you think about solving an integral, don't you have a qualia for an integral? The way they are typeset must be a pain for technical book publishers, but most people would object strongly to a more 'rational' notation. Even ideas without a special symbol, seem to have a place in the mind that is very qualia-like. Also, some of the most productive individuals - such as Ramanujan - seem to have had totally strange ways of thinking, utterly remote from the data sifting ideas that seem to derive from the ultimate abstraction of 'rational' thought.
David