Lexicon of Arguments

 

I 89
SearleVsEmpricism: "empirical" is ambiguous: ontological (causal) or epistemologically (observable parallelism). >SearleVsEmpiricism.

Behavior is irrelevant when it comes to the ontology of consciousness. We could have two systems (robots) with identical behavior, one of which has consciousness and the other does not.
Empiricist philosophers will not be comfortable with these thought experiments. It will seem to you as if I am assuming the existence of empirical facts regarding the mental states of a system, but which cannot be proved by any empirical means.
You believe that the behavior of another system is the only clue we have to attribute mental states to this system.
>Robot, >Behavior, >Simulation, >Consciousness, >Zombies, >Mind, >Computer-model, >Turing test.

There is a systematic ambiguity in the use of the word "empirical".
(a) Ontological sense of "empirical."
Then when one speaks of empirical facts, sometimes contingent facts in the world are meant.
I 90
b) Epistemological sense of this word. Here one means a provable sense, namely from the perspective of the third person. Supposedly, all empirical facts are equally accessible to all competent observers.
But we know that this is not true. There are any number of empirical facts which are not equally accessible to all competent observers.
((s) Otherwise one would have to define competence by access, which would be circular.)