SCIENCE OF THE ANOMALOUS OR SEARCH FOR THE SOUL?

DP: "One cannot claim to be studying mind or cognition while ignoring... its one distinguishing characteristic, i.e. knowing." 

Unfelt knowing is fine; the problem comes with felt knowing. (But this is not a topic for this concepts-thread but for the explanatory-gap thread. I will reply briefly here, this last time, but please send any further postings on the subject of consciousness to the explanatory-gap thread as I do not wish to divert the discussion on modelling concepts toward the problem of consciousness.)

DP: "Stevan is confused in calling awareness "a feeling"

Look closely at all your examples of states of awareness and you will notice that they are all felt states (and vice versa). (Please redirect follow-ups on explanatory-gap thread.)

DP: "his idea of "act" cannot be endorsed." 

Later Dennis writes "My dictionary says that an act is doing a thing." I'm happy to endorse that!

DP: "While I fully endorse the science of evolution...  Stevan's claim that "... thinking evolved in the service of doing... has no logical or empirical support..."

Doing and capability of doing (i.e., performance and performance capacity, performance potential). I think that's precisely what evolution explains -- and it has virtually nothing but empirical support!

Harnad, S. (1994) Levels of Functional Equivalence in Reverse Bioengineering: The Darwinian Turing Test for Artificial Life. Artificial Life 1(3): 293-301. Reprinted in: C.G. Langton (Ed.). Artificial Life: An Overview. MIT Press 1995. 

Harnad, S. (2002) Darwin, Skinner, Turing and the Mind. (Inaugural Address. Hungarian Academy of Science.) Magyar Pszichologiai Szemle LVII (4) 521-528. 

Harnad, S. (2002) Turing Indistinguishability and the Blind Watchmaker. In: J. Fetzer (ed.) Evolving Consciousness Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pp. 3-18.  

Harnad, S. (2009) On Fodor on Darwin on Evolution. Technical Report. Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton.

DP: "what we can say evolved in the service of doing was data processing, which is entirely adequate to increase fitness and natural selection, without any need for the veridical reference characteristic of sound thought."

I'm not quite sure what "sound" thought means (rigorous mathematical proof?), but if the underlying question is again about why thought ("data-processing")  is felt rather than just functed feelinglessly, please redirect this question to explanatory-gap thread.

DP: "much thinking is not in support of doing at all... Many examples of "impractical" thought come to mind..."

Doing and capability of doing (i.e., performance and performance capacity, performance potential), including planning capacity.

DP: "can there be knowing without a knowing subject and some known content or object? And, if there cannot be, how can we study knowing as opposed to biological data processing while ignoring subjectivity, i.e. being aware?"

There can be and is knowing, mostly felt knowing, hence there is a feeler. But how and why knowing is felt, rather than just "functed", is a question that should be redirected to the explanatory-gap thread.

DP: "Stevan calls awareness "a feeling."Surely that is both dismissive and ill-considered."

No, it's accepting, rather thoroughly considered, and calling a spade a spade -- but not a question for the concepts-thread.  (Please redirect follow-ups on this to explanatory-gap thread.)

DP: "My dictionary says that an act is doing a thing. Surely effecting a change is doing a thing, and making what was merely intelligible actually known by becoming aware of it is an important change. Saying awareness is an act is neither question begging nor problematic."

 (Please redirect this question -- a variant on the earlier ones above -- to the explanatory-gap thread.)

DP: "A machine can respond to a presented apple by outputting "apple,"but that would not fool most people into thinking it knew what an apple is."

But maybe something that's closer to having the full performance capacity of the machine that we actually are -- such as a lifelong Turing-Test-Passing Robot -- would not be "fooling" us...

DP: "however you choose to define "to know," it will not be what people do without including awareness." 

(Please redirect follow-ups to explanatory-gap thread.)

DP: "that laws are universal to the extent of excluding perturbations by intending subjects has no empirical basis... that subjects can perturb physical systems systems intentionally... has strong, repeatable experimental support... I cited a little of the data supporting my position. Stevan rejects it because 'most people' do."

James E. Alcock (2003) Give the Null Hypothesis a Chance: Reasons to Remain Doubtful about the Existence of Psi. Journal of Consciousness Studies 10.

James E. Alcock (1987). Parapsychology: Science of the anomalous or search for the soul? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 10:553–643

Stevan Harnad