Re:

[nd603@soton.ac.uk]

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ok.you people move too fast.some of the points i was going to make when i
could be bothered have already been made, so i won't reiterate them except
to
agree with rab on the intractability of the other minds problem - i did a
fair bit of work on this last semester and i could not find any solution
that didn't at some point take an unjustifiable leap, since every solution
is
troubled by a lack of data. the big problem is that we
cannot know the content of anyone else's mind, it belongs in some realm
which we do not have access to.any attempts to reduce mental activity to
brain activity also fail, and just seem vaguely (and inexplicably) wrong to
most people. however as alice said, if this is true, it applies equally to
humans, animals, indeed anything which we suspect may have a mind.

having said that though, at some point the philosophical must become the
practical.we assume other people have rational minds because it is the only
way to live.as for animals, well, most people believe they have some kind of
mind, and as for the self awareness, i actually think most animals are
self-aware.i was going to provide a justification for that belief, but then
realised that the problem of other minds would sufficiently undermine me to
make it entirely pointless.

however, why should an ability to reason be dependent on self-awareness? i
can make
objective decisions about geometry etc with no sense of self whatsoever.
and what about mental patients who have either lost a sense of self, or
have a sense of multiple selves (which clearly denotes an inconsistency
between their perception of themselves, and the reality).so even if
something lacks self-awareness, it can still have a rational mind.

my point on vegetarianism is more that i think it is in our nature to eat
meat, wage war etc.alice, i wasn't trying to claim something is justifiable
simply because we have done it in the past, more that we have a consistent
and universal (overall, as a species) tendency to this kind of behaviour. a
large proportion of the human population enjoys inflicting suffering on
others. the question is more to do with whether this is an element of our
nature that we can/should overcome or not. as a side note - people seem to
be assuming that if something is alive, it has a right to life. why? surely
this is a naturalistic fallacy? saying that since this cow is alive, it
ought to remain alive?


ok art. i don't think that you can really use art as an argument for the
existence of others.no more than you can the existence of their bodies.if
machines can produce what david assumes to be a lesser art (and i'm not
debating that point) then surely it would just take a more sophisticated
machine to produce a more sophisticated and unique piece of art? if you
open media player, and turn on the visualisations, then you will see a
constantly changing, unique piece of visual artistry. the code may have
been written by a human (we assume) but the actual piece of art is being
produced by the computer.there is no way we can ever know whether something
has been produced by a computer or a person. and what of the classic
infinite monkeys in infinite time writing the works of shakespeare?not to
mention the possibility that we are hallucinating the entire thing.although
i'm getting silly there so i'll stop.

but what about the existence of music? could a computer actually compose
music?music that is actually capable of touching people? i'm not entirely
sure how this is different, but somehow i feel it is. i may try to justify
that at some point.

nick




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