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I don't understand this argument. (It keeps coming up.) The two issues I have with this are: a) Self-perception does not seem like consciousness to me at all.
by quonn 10y ago
I don't understand this argument. (It keeps coming up.) The two issues I have with this are:
a) Self-perception does not seem like consciousness to me at all. In meditation, if done properly, there is very little self left. It feels more like pure awareness. It is almost the opposite of the model of the self that the brain constructs.
b) I fail to see how the fact that a mechanism refers to itself should somehow give rise to the feeling of conciousness. Why would it? Nobody would predict consciousness from that if we would not already know it exists and it's easy to imagine a device that has a model of itself and is not self-aware.
I understand the need to somehow fit this into our scientific framework, and the idea that "consciousness is just what it feels to have a brain" is the best thing we have, but I don't think it explains anything. There is something we are missing.
- donmatito 10y agoAnswers to "can we give consciousness to AI" is heavily dependent on how you define consciousness in the first place. Many definitions can coexist, some more actionable than others. "Being aware of the existence of oneself in the world, and being able to reflect on oneself's decision" seems relatively practical. So, Self-perception + self-reflection = consciouness (as a definition) From this starting point, it seems reasonable to derive that consciousness can arise from 1) mental representation of the world that include oneself 2) empathy for others (I can guess why this other worker has taken this decision) that, once applied to the actions of the self as if it were an external agent, gives self-reflection.
- platz 10y agoSo then an x86 emulator running on x86 means the thing is conscious? No.. This is just pushing the essence of the problem onto the word 'aware'