17 The Chinese Room Revisited, Thought on Consciousness << Prev Next >>
by: ColonelZen in reply to 11 by ColonelZen	IP: 251.46	rated: 0-0	posted: 2007-11-30 13:45:05
(the debate over "consiousness" rages on on http://www.the-brights.net discussion forums, Science and Philosophy, The Chinese Room, with many trying to describe something special or magical about consciousness while twisting hither and yon to avoid supernatural references, which of course on a "naturalist" or atheist forum are beyond the pale).     What exactly is it about "consciousness" that makes some of you declare that it must be distinctive and unique to wetware?     I haven't read here of anyone else even close to offering a non-arbitrary definition which could thus constrain it. Nor has anyone critiqued my offering in detail:     (here slightly polished):     Consciousness is the relative ability of an entity to predict the consequential changes in its internal states in response to its own options and ability to interact with its environment.     Is your only critique that this definition can in fact fairly easily be modeled in software ... thus when the other elements of AI come together be incorporated in them? Or that it gives more weight to external interaction than you are comfortable with (see prior postings for disagreement on mental state between oneself and an external observer - we are very poor judges of our own level of consciousness, even at the gross level as per deep thought vs sleep)?     What I am seeing is a great deal of worship of an Aristotlean universe: we must hold some unique position or property. Why? Our history of scientific thought should push us in exactly the opposite direction.     Almost everyone here is willing to grant "consciousness" to everyone else here? Why?     The simple answer, and I very strongly suspect only answer, is that thus far the only entities (we know of) who can post coherently on a bbs are bipedal mammals who look enough like us that we, oh so charitably, are willing to grant that they might have some of the features we attribute to ourselves. But the postulate of this thread is an AI which can pass the Turing Test. When such entities exist they could be posting here (perhaps with a mandate not to reveal their nature) and you could not know it. How would then be different than now?     Quite frankly I expect that from very early on AI's will have "consciousness" that makes us look to be in a perpetual coma - there's no reason their internal states would not be calibrated and quantified with far greater granularity than we are capable and no reason they would not precisely be able to predict them for any given activity or load.       back to beginnings. Searle's "paradox"     My wife would probably misspell science and almost definitely would engineering. She hasn't the slightest clue how an internal combustion engine works and in fact was quite alarmed - almost frightened - when I once tried to explain it. But she operates a car passably well.     -- TWZ