ABSTRACT

I will begin by asking whether consciousness attribution is different for formal entities with whom one interacts through a monitor representation of an environment than for physically realized devices. Some might hold that a formal PAL even of the most elaborate kind would not be conscious simply because it is a merely formal entity. One might say that there is nothing there to be conscious. Gertrude Stein is supposed to have said about Los Angeles (or was it merely Oakland?)that there’s “no there there.” The view we’re now considering about PAL is that there’s “no it there.”