A moment of pedantry, since homonyms are a bit of an obsession of mine: you mean "pare", not "pair".
Sorry. Completely irrelevant, feel free to ignore it in later posts. Just had to say it because my inner word Nazi was kicking up a storm.
Thats ok, my I pad is continually changing what I type into other words, I have to keep an eye on it.
I didn't say they were, though they are certainly evidence that it's not necessary.
Not necessary for the correct functioning of the apparatus... Through which the
soul manifests.
And there's still no evidence for it, either.
But everything in existence could be evidence for it. We just can't see the wood for the trees due to our lack of understanding of the make up of existence.
"Logic is a human invention" holds no weight when it demonstrably works.
What, in determining ontologies? It's flaws don't help us.
You can think it as unlikely as you like. Every piece of evidence we have points towards that conclusion.
So provisionally self-consciousness is due to computation then.
"You have proof, but you don't have proof."
Remember the high bar for proof.
Contradictory statements aside, this is still circular reasoning. You are assuming that organic life is a prerequisite for consciousness, then using that assumption to assert that p-zombies can exist if they are machines.
I am not assuming the necessity of organic life, I am observing its involvement in the scenario. But my point rests on the fact that both the fully self-conscious person and the person in a vegetative state have an identical make up (excluding genetic difference etc) in their body, as opposed to a robot for example. If the person in a vegetative state where to recover suddenly, one would know immediately that they where self-conscious and not just an automaton or robot. However if they where replaced by an automaton with the identical appearance of that person and behaved as that person did when they recovered, one would not be able to say, immediately, that they where self-conscious. Because they might actually be clockwork or some other mimicking device.
But even that doesn't really help you. The moment that a machine that behaves in every circumstance exactly as though it is conscious shows up, we have evidence that the machine is conscious - which would send your entire argument against machine consciousness out the window.
This is where the distinction between conscious and self-conscious becomes important. The machine which behaves in every circumstance as though it is self-conscious, need not be self-conscious to perform the act. All that it would require is a form of computation equivalent to a
basic consciousness of its environment,*to succeed in its deception.
*By basic consciousness of its environment I mean it can detect many details of its environment and its own position in that environment and compute a large number of out comes and possible courses of action in relation to it. Followed by a sophisticated strategy of action.
I have given it before, both in this thread and in others.
"Behaves in every circumstance exactly as though something is true."
Well I haven't come across this before, I don't think I can work with this as there is the presumption that things only exist if they are rational or truthful to humans.
Surely a better definition of is is, the third person singular present of be.
Which does not help you in any way, since you have no way of ever knowing, ever, that it is Y.
Or of whether x is a subset of y.
Idealism is still not rational.
Logical, I presume. I assure you logically a human can quite easily consider that existence is as a consequence of mind, the very mind that is doing their thinking for them. Because that thinking comes prior to any other knowledge they might have.
"A thing that has X property has X property."
"Unless it's a machine!"
That isn't how it works. It still has X property.
Now who's assuming their conclusion? A robot, for example Data, can exhibit any property that a human can (except for biological bodily functions which are irrelevant to this point) in the absence of self consciousness. Why not?
An absolutely perfect mimicry is the thing it is mimicking.
If it quacks like a duck and it looks like a duck, it must be a duck and not an automaton.
Word games.
Idealism as a philosophical position remains untenable. You either reject all possibility of knowledge and retreat towards solipsism, in which case you still aren't rational in any sense and your entire position collapses as soon as you understand what "is" means, or you simply don't have any supporting evidence.
Remember personal thought is a priori to all other knowledge. If personal thought is y*, why can't all secondary knowledge x be a subset of y?
You really can't get around this.
*y=mind.
There's no incoherence to show. The two statements are simply not relevant to the actual question.
Yes there is no coherence to show, provided the definition of the zombie is not to confined. Ah, I remember the definition of coherence includes "not possessing an actual definition". Well where does that leave us I wonder.
