Ideas from 'The Problem of Consciousness' by Colin McGinn [1991], by Theme Structure

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17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 6. Mysterianism
McGinn invites surrender, by saying it is hopeless trying to imagine conscious machines
                        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.
                        From: comment on Colin McGinn (The Problem of Consciousness [1991]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness Explained 14.1
                        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...
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 7. Anti-Physicalism / b. Multiple realisability
Multiple realisability rules out hidden essences and experts as the source of water- and gold-concepts
                        Full Idea: The multiple realisability emphasised by functionalists rules out the hidden essences (and the 'deferential' move in semantics) that one finds in the cases, for example, of "water" and "gold" emphasised by Kripke and Putnam.
                        From: Colin McGinn (The Problem of Consciousness [1991], p.132)
                        A reaction: Presumably if they are 'hidden', then the people to whom we 'defer' for our concepts can't actually know about the essences we are supposed to be discussing. You can mean essences without knowing them. Cf. Loch Ness Monster.