I asked them to instead describe the structure of the consciousness process, in terms of moving parts and/or subprocesses, at a level that would in principle help me to programmatically check whether the processes inside another mind or object were conscious.
This biases the answers a lot.
Thomas Kuhn asked both a chemist and a physicist whether single atom of helium was or was not a molecule. For the chemist the atom of helium was a molecule because it behaved like one with respect to the kinetic theory of gases. For the physicist, on the other hand, the helium atom was not a molecule because it displayed no molecular spectrum.
You might speak in the same sense as your post of “Molecule as a conflationary alliance term” between chemistry an physics. They even disagree on a simple question like the helium atom. If you ask a bunch of other different scientists I wouldn’t be suprised if they also find a bunch of different ways to tell whether or not something is a molecule.
At the same time most scientific papers have no problem with using the term molecule without specifying an exact way it’s operationalized and the audience understand what’s meant just fine.
This biases the answers a lot.
Thomas Kuhn asked both a chemist and a physicist whether single atom of helium was or was not a molecule. For the chemist the atom of helium was a molecule because it behaved like one with respect to the kinetic theory of gases. For the physicist, on the other hand, the helium atom was not a molecule because it displayed no molecular spectrum.
You might speak in the same sense as your post of “Molecule as a conflationary alliance term” between chemistry an physics. They even disagree on a simple question like the helium atom. If you ask a bunch of other different scientists I wouldn’t be suprised if they also find a bunch of different ways to tell whether or not something is a molecule.
At the same time most scientific papers have no problem with using the term molecule without specifying an exact way it’s operationalized and the audience understand what’s meant just fine.