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> others only pretend to be conscious > how do I know if they're answering truthfully? > anyone who professed non-consciousness The ability to lie seems to m
by girzel 7y ago
> others only pretend to be conscious
> how do I know if they're answering truthfully?
> anyone who professed non-consciousness
The ability to lie seems to me to imply at least some level of consciousness. How could/why would you deceive others if you have no concept of your own existence?
- xamuel 7y agoI can easily write a computer program that tells lies, that doesn't mean it's conscious.
- ericb 7y agoYes, but the key ingredient for human lying is a theory of mind, and a theory of mind is difficult to formulate without your own consciousness to generalize from. To get to even the motive for lying in the first place, you'd need awareness. For a philosophical zombie, you'd need this behavior to exist independent of the zombie having a theory of mind and conscious awareness which they can use to reason about the state of another's awareness. That's a lot leaps of faith to take.
- reallydude 7y agoThis "theory of mind" can be called "imagination" in a limited form. Allowing our conceptual self to act and predict what will happen is key to "consciousness". We don't need to die by walking off a cliff, if we can have a conceptual version of ourself walk off, imagine the result of walking off the cliff and choose not to do it. Yes this expands consciousness to animals, but I doubt it goes much farther than that. I think it fits.
- girzel 7y agoYou can write a computer program that returns incorrect information, I think that's the extent of it.
- xamuel 7y agoCan you prove to me that you're not an elaborate bot programmed to post on Hacker News?