From:	SMTP%"klein@adage.Berkeley.EDU" 10-MAR-1996 08:16:57.26
To:	STAPP
CC:	
Subj:	Re: Reply to Hayes 5

Date: Sun, 10 Mar 96 08:13:15 PST
From: klein@adage.Berkeley.EDU (Stanley Klein)
Message-Id: <9603101613.AA02634@adage.Berkeley.EDU>
To: ghrosenb@phil.indiana.edu, phayes@cs.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: Reply to Hayes 5
Cc: A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk, STAPP@theorm.lbl.gov, brings@rpi.edu,
        keith@imprint.co.uk, klein@adage.Berkeley.EDU, mckee@neosoft.com,
        patrickw@cs.monash.edu.au

I am trying to figure out a way to get agreement among us, and thereafter 
agreement on the wider bulletin boards. I think that part of the problem is 
that when Hayes or Thomas Clark defends an identity theory then Gregg or 
Henry worry that they are minimizing (or leaving out) what is to most 
vertebrates the most central aspect of their lives. Similarly when Gregg or 
Henry talk about duality or P=/=F then Hayes or Clark worry that a new 
extraphysical entity is being conjured up. 

I have discovered that one problem with email is that some of these 
misconceptions have been cleared up in previous postings or in previous 
articles, but then they are forgotten by the readers of the present posting. I 
would like to imagine that maybe in one or two years from now we will be 
doing these communications on the web, where we can always insert a 
pointer to a basic one page statement of our answers to maybe 10 basic 
questions (do I believe in extra-physical forces, do I believe that there are 
physical causes and correlates of qualia, do I believe that Jackson's Mary 
learned something new when the color was turned on). I would like to work 
with some philosophers to develop these 10 basic questions so that when I 
read a current email I can go back to the person's position on the 10 basics 
before I do improper pigeonholing of that person's stance. 

A second thing that would be wonderful is for a heavily moderated bulletin 
board. The moderator would attempt to remove ambiguities from 
statements. For example, I am getting very tired of seeing continued 
discussion of zombies where there is ambiguity of whether it is a 
performance-identical zombie or a physical-identical zombie (two very 
different creatures). Over time we would develop a list of sanctioned uses 
of words to which people on the bulletin board would have to conform. This 
would be much easier once the web gets going since the sanctioned word 
dictionary would be easily accessible. We may want to, for example, ban 
such ambiguous statements as "the phenomenal experience is the neural 
activity" or "P=F" since there is great ambiguity in the meaning of "is" and 
"=". I think that we could come up with a much better set of words. In the 
last few months we have actually seen (and forgotten) wonderful 
clarifications of such words. The phrase "the phenomenal experience is 
caused by the neural activity" is less ambigious. And Henry has wanted 
further clarification of the word "caused by". Possibly "empirically caused 
by" would be better. These topics could be discussed and then once an 
approved less ambiguous language is developed the moderator could enforce 
it. It might slow us down a bit initially, but I thing the payoff is enormous 
in the progress that would be made, especially as we would like to see our 
conclusions spread to other people. Presently it is easy to write a quickie 
email letter, but then we spend months clarifying it. There would also be 
some speed-up because whenever I say "the phenomenal experience is 
caused by the neural activity" I wouldn't have to qualify the sentence by the 
additional clause "by neural activity I really mean whatever it will turn out 
to be that is the physical cause of the qualia such as microtubule activity 
or long range oscillations in addition to neural firing rates". Such qualifying
phrases would be found in the glossary of approved words.

As I read the variety of our positions there is actually large areas of 
agreement between us (including Searle and Dennett who seem so violently 
opposed to each other). I would love to see those areas of agreement 
acknowledged and the areas of disagreement or confusion sharpened. I think 
we are close to doing that within our little discussion group, but once that 
is achieved how can we widen what we have hammered out to a wider 
group?

Stan