Brent Allsop <allsop@fc.hp.com> Wrote:
> My prediction is that within the next 20 years we will finally
> discover what "spiritual" stuff or "qualia" (i.e. a red or
> salty... sensation) are.
And I predict you that although you may indeed find the correct
qualia theory someday you will never know for certain it's right,
in fact you'll never be able to prove that any qualia theory is
correct and you'll seldom even be able to prove that it's incorrect.
That's why qualia theories don't interest me much.
>Once we do this people will finally realize that trying to know if
>a machine really "feels" such "spiritual" things simply by observing
>external behavior as he describes can result in at best an "idle claim".
Even you admit we don't have such a theory now so I wonder,
are you equally skeptical about the inner life of your fellow human
beings and if not why not?
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:03:49 MDT