Church-Turing Lovers are sex robots that attain every functionality of a human lover, at the desi... more Church-Turing Lovers are sex robots that attain every functionality of a human lover, at the desired level of granularity. Yet they have no first-person consciousness—there is “nobody home.” When such a lover says, “I love you,” there are all the intentions to please you, even computer emotions. Would you care whether your significant other is a Church-Turing Lover? Does one care about one’s lover only insofar as his/her functionalities are involved, or does one care how the lover feels. Church-Turing Lovers demonstrate how even epiphenomenal experience provides reasons to care about other people’s first-person consciousness. In a related argument, I propose the notion of the Uncanny Valley of Perfection. I systematize the standards for humanoid robots as follows: minimally humanoid (teddy bears); bottom of the Uncanny Valley (repulsive sex dolls); Silver Standard (almost human-looking), Gold Standard (hard to distinguish from humans at the right level of granularity); Platinum Standard (slightly improved on humans); the Uncanny Valley of Perfection (too much better than humans); the Slope of the Angels (no longer humanoid, viewed with awe).
Jackson claims that a person who sees colors for the first time by this very fact acquires a cert... more Jackson claims that a person who sees colors for the first time by this very fact acquires a certain knowledge which she or he could not have learned in a black and white world. This argument can be generalized to other secondary qualities. I argue that this claim is indefensible without implicit recourse to the first-person experience; also Nagel’s "what it is like" argument is polemically weak. Hence, we have no argument able to dismiss physicalism by consideration of first-person qualia (contra Jackson); however, it does not force us to endorse qualia-reductionism. In the second part of my paper I defend non-reductionism in a different way. Following Nagel and Harman, I try to avoid criticisms usually presented against Nagel, seeing subjectivity and objectivity as two complementary structures of the subjective and objective element of our language. I refer to classical German philosophy, phenomenology and Marxist dialectics which have developed a complementary approach crucial in the reductionist/anti-reductionist controversy in the philosophy of mind.
Creature consciousness provides a physicalist account of the first-person awareness (contra Rosen... more Creature consciousness provides a physicalist account of the first-person awareness (contra Rosenthal). I argue that non-reductive consciousness is not about phenomenal qualia (Nagel’s what it is like to feel like something else); it is about the stream of awareness that makes any objects of perception epistemically available and ontologically present. This kind of consciousness is central, internally to one’s awareness. Externally, the feel about one’s significant other’s that “there is someone home” is quite important too. This is not substance dualism since creature consciousness and functional consciousness are both at different generality levels of physicalism. Surprisingly, pre-Hegel philosophy of pure subject is more fitting with the current engineering approach than analytical phenomenalism. The complementary view of subject- and object-related perspectives, may come from Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre; but here it is placed, securely within the physicalist paradigm. It is essential to the Engineering Thesis in Machine Consciousness, which helps us understand under what general conditions a machine would be first-person conscious, but when it is merely functionally conscious.
... person knowledge. Department of Philosophy Saint Olaf College, Northfield (MN) NOTES * I am g... more ... person knowledge. Department of Philosophy Saint Olaf College, Northfield (MN) NOTES * I am grateful to Gilbert Harman, Terence Horgan and Sara Worley for their comments on different versions of this paper. 1 According ...
Church-Turing Lovers are sex robots that attain every functionality of a human lover, at the desi... more Church-Turing Lovers are sex robots that attain every functionality of a human lover, at the desired level of granularity. Yet they have no first-person consciousness—there is “nobody home.” When such a lover says, “I love you,” there are all the intentions to please you, even computer emotions. Would you care whether your significant other is a Church-Turing Lover? Does one care about one’s lover only insofar as his/her functionalities are involved, or does one care how the lover feels. Church-Turing Lovers demonstrate how even epiphenomenal experience provides reasons to care about other people’s first-person consciousness. In a related argument, I propose the notion of the Uncanny Valley of Perfection. I systematize the standards for humanoid robots as follows: minimally humanoid (teddy bears); bottom of the Uncanny Valley (repulsive sex dolls); Silver Standard (almost human-looking), Gold Standard (hard to distinguish from humans at the right level of granularity); Platinum Standard (slightly improved on humans); the Uncanny Valley of Perfection (too much better than humans); the Slope of the Angels (no longer humanoid, viewed with awe).
Jackson claims that a person who sees colors for the first time by this very fact acquires a cert... more Jackson claims that a person who sees colors for the first time by this very fact acquires a certain knowledge which she or he could not have learned in a black and white world. This argument can be generalized to other secondary qualities. I argue that this claim is indefensible without implicit recourse to the first-person experience; also Nagel’s "what it is like" argument is polemically weak. Hence, we have no argument able to dismiss physicalism by consideration of first-person qualia (contra Jackson); however, it does not force us to endorse qualia-reductionism. In the second part of my paper I defend non-reductionism in a different way. Following Nagel and Harman, I try to avoid criticisms usually presented against Nagel, seeing subjectivity and objectivity as two complementary structures of the subjective and objective element of our language. I refer to classical German philosophy, phenomenology and Marxist dialectics which have developed a complementary approach crucial in the reductionist/anti-reductionist controversy in the philosophy of mind.
Creature consciousness provides a physicalist account of the first-person awareness (contra Rosen... more Creature consciousness provides a physicalist account of the first-person awareness (contra Rosenthal). I argue that non-reductive consciousness is not about phenomenal qualia (Nagel’s what it is like to feel like something else); it is about the stream of awareness that makes any objects of perception epistemically available and ontologically present. This kind of consciousness is central, internally to one’s awareness. Externally, the feel about one’s significant other’s that “there is someone home” is quite important too. This is not substance dualism since creature consciousness and functional consciousness are both at different generality levels of physicalism. Surprisingly, pre-Hegel philosophy of pure subject is more fitting with the current engineering approach than analytical phenomenalism. The complementary view of subject- and object-related perspectives, may come from Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre; but here it is placed, securely within the physicalist paradigm. It is essential to the Engineering Thesis in Machine Consciousness, which helps us understand under what general conditions a machine would be first-person conscious, but when it is merely functionally conscious.
... person knowledge. Department of Philosophy Saint Olaf College, Northfield (MN) NOTES * I am g... more ... person knowledge. Department of Philosophy Saint Olaf College, Northfield (MN) NOTES * I am grateful to Gilbert Harman, Terence Horgan and Sara Worley for their comments on different versions of this paper. 1 According ...
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