creators_name: Donath, Judith editors_name: Wallerstein, Immanuel editors_name: Bergman, Aviv editors_name: Dupuy, Jean-Pierre type: confpaper datestamp: 2007-03-06 lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:56:47 metadata_visibility: show title: The imperfect observer: Mind, machines, and materialism in the 21st century ispublished: inpress subjects: phil-mind subjects: comp-sci-art-intel full_text_status: public keywords: dualism, consciousness, machine intelligence, neurophilosophy abstract: The dualist / materialist debates about the nature of consciousness are based on the assumption that an entirely physical universe must ultimately be observable by humans (with infinitely advanced tools). Thus the dualists claim that anything unobservable must be non-physical, while the materialists argue that in theory nothing is unobservable. 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