CONSCIOUSNESS

1. Philosophy 57
the examples, generates a procedure to solve the arithmetic / mathematical problem, executes
the procedure to solve new examples of the problem, and keeps execution results. An instance
sequence describing its experience and capability consists of words of a question ‘can you do
division?’ followed by an answer ‘yes, I can’ or ‘no, I cannot’ while the human confirms the
program has acquired how to divide an integer by another or has not. Given the sequences
of the words, the program generates a procedure to make a positive or a negative answer to a
question ‘can you do abc?’ depending on its experiences on the problem abc. Now, the human
gives the program examples that cover a part of a problem, for instance ‘factorize 4’, ‘factorize
8’ and ‘factorize 16’. Then the program generates a procedure of factorizing an integer of a
power of 2, and uses it to factorize an integer, 1024 say. In this situation, the program makes a
positive answer to a question ‘can you do prime factorization?’ because the program has used
the procedure to do prime factorization and has no experiences of failing prime factorization
although the program is not able to factorize 27. The program has made a right answer at
that moment, but it turns out to be self-satisfied if the program finds it fails to ‘factorize 27’.
A view of our program consists in the procedures that the program has generated. One kind
of the procedures describes how to solve arithmetic / mathematical problems, and the other
kind describes how to answer questions about its experiences and / or capabilities of solving
the problems. Thus the view outputs a description of its experiences and capabilities, and is
subjective because the human has not programmed the view but the program has developed it
and is going to change it because the program forms and keeps modifying the procedures. P7
36 Knowledge Argument on the Basis of Our Computer Program Kenzo Iwama,
Machiko Fujiwara (Engicom, Tokyo, Japan)
This paper argues that a pure phenomenal concept (Chalmers, 2004) can be explained
by a seed of a procedure that our program generates when the program finds an inconsistency
among currently active procedures. A recognitional concept (Loar, 1990; Carruthers
2000; Tye 2000) is formed later to index the pure phenomenal concept. Firstly the paper
explains a computer program that acquires how to solve arithmetic / mathematical problems
by generating procedures from examples and executing the procedures to solve new examples
of the problems. Before getting the examples, the program does not have the procedures to
solve the problems. If the program has got examples that cover only a part of the problem,
the program fails to execute the procedure on a new example that is out of the coverage.
The program always forms a seed of a procedure when the program finds an inconsistency
among currently active procedures, and a failure is one of the inconsistencies. On the other
hand, let the program have knowledge of how the program runs. Secondly the paper argues
that procedures generated are the self-model of a program, and it focuses on the Knowledge
Argument. Mary’s knowledge corresponds to the knowledge about the program, and Mary’s
color experience corresponds to a failure of executing its procedure. A combination of examples
and a new example of a mathematical problem determines if a failure occurs, and the
new example makes the program experience the failure of executing a procedure to the end.
The failure is characterized by the combination of the examples and the new example of the
problem. The program forms a seed of another procedure to represent the failure because the
program cannot have the procedure to represent it in advance. A seed thus formed is “a pure
phenomenal concept”, and is “isolated” from other concepts (e.g., Carruthers, 2007). The seed
will be indexed within the self-model (or has its relation to a set of procedures already generated)
only after the self-model with the seed reforms itself because the model has not included
characteristics of the seed to form itself with indexes in advance. (Mary’s self-model has not
included wavelength of red yet.) The reformation makes a recognitional concept that indexes
to the pure phenomenal concept and the concept can be applied when another failure occurs.
Knowledge about our program is able to tell that the program is going to fail, to form a seed
of a procedure to represent the failure after the program gets examples of a problem and a new
example, and to tell how the program modifies the self-model to include characteristics of the
failure. (Mary’s knowledge can tell how the self-model is going to integrate wavelength of red
into itself after getting the wavelength of red.) P7