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Full Idea
McGinn invites his readers to join him in surrender: It's just impossible to imagine how software could make a conscious robot. Don't even try, he says. Other philosophical experiments (involving China) "work" by dissuading readers from imagining.
Gist of Idea
McGinn invites surrender, by saying it is hopeless trying to imagine conscious machines
Source
comment on Colin McGinn (The Problem of Consciousness [1991]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness Explained 14.1
Book Ref
Dennett,Daniel C.: 'Consciousness Explained' [Penguin 1993], p.435
A Reaction
I agree with Dennett. If you don't try to imagine how robots might do it, you are also denied the right to try to imagine how brains might manage it. Admittedly this is hard, but good imagination needs study, effort, discussion, time, information...
| 9114 | There are no secure foundations to prove the separate existence of mind, in reason or experience [William of Ockham] |
| 12500 | Thinking without matter and matter that thinks are equally baffling [Locke] |
| 15996 | We can't begin to conceive what would produce some particular experience within our minds [Locke] |
| 12552 | Thoughts moving bodies, and bodies producing thoughts, are equally unknowable [Locke] |
| 4154 | Why are we not aware of the huge gap between mind and brain in ordinary life? [Wittgenstein] |
| 3466 | Consciousness seems indefinable by conditions or categories [Searle] |
| 4883 | Nagel's title creates an impenetrable mystery, by ignoring a bat's ways that may not be "like" anything [Dennett on Nagel] |
| 3287 | We can't be objective about experience [Nagel] |
| 2540 | Examining mind sees no brain; examining brain sees no mind [McGinn] |
| 7388 | McGinn invites surrender, by saying it is hopeless trying to imagine conscious machines [Dennett on McGinn] |
| 9318 | Phenomenal consciousness is fundamental, with no possible nonphenomenal explanation [Chalmers, by Kriegel/Williford] |
| 2404 | Nothing external shows whether a mouse is conscious [Chalmers] |
| 7059 | The 'explanatory gap' is used to say consciousness is inexplicable, at least with current concepts [Heil] |