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Yes, but we don't know how to check that an entity has a conscious experience, so we can not falsify that a Turing machine has one, either. That's the whole rea

Yes, but we don't know how to check that an entity has a conscious experience, so we can not falsify that a Turing machine has one, either. That's the whole reason for the Turing Test, btw.

antonvs 7y ago
Yes, we can't falsify that a Turing machine has conscious experience, but we have no reason or explanation to suggest that it does have one. To come back to the original claim: > Simple: Find something that the brain does that could not, in principle, be emulated by a Turing machine or equivalent. So far we don't know of any such thing We may not "know" of such a thing with certainty, but we have a strong candidate in consciousness. There are two possibilities here: One is that Turing machines are conscious (and we're monsters for what we do with them), in which case we still have an unexplained panpsychic phenomenon which we would need new science to understand. The other is that Turing machines are not conscious, in which case there's an unexplained phenomenon in how an object like the brain can give rise to consciousness. In that case, the question of whether a Turing machine could in principle emulate consciousness depends on what the cause of consciousness is. It's certainly possible, and doesn't even seem particularly unlikely, that we find that Turing machines cannot do this, and that something other than "computation" is needed.
- TuringTest 7y ago
  > Yes, we can't falsify that a Turing machine has conscious experience, but we have no reason or explanation to suggest that it does have one. I don't have no reason or explanation that suggests that you have a consciousness either. You could be a very elaborate chatbot that posts coherent replies at online forums. Also, I do know whether I'm a chatbot myself or not, but you can't tell about me just from the replies written here. > We may not "know" of such a thing with certainty, but we have a strong candidate in consciousness. The problem with that is, you don't have a test for consciousness. There's a strong candidate in MRI brain scans (at least for humans), but you can't really be sure.

Yes, but we don't know how to check that an entity has a conscious experience, so we can not falsify that a Turing machine has one, either. That's the whole reason for the Turing Test, btw.

antonvs 7y ago

Yes, we can't falsify that a Turing machine has conscious experience, but we have no reason or explanation to suggest that it does have one. To come back to the original claim: > Simple: Find something that the brain does that could not, in principle, be emulated by a Turing machine or equivalent. So far we don't know of any such thing We may not "know" of such a thing with certainty, but we have a strong candidate in consciousness. There are two possibilities here: One is that Turing machines are conscious (and we're monsters for what we do with them), in which case we still have an unexplained panpsychic phenomenon which we would need new science to understand. The other is that Turing machines are not conscious, in which case there's an unexplained phenomenon in how an object like the brain can give rise to consciousness. In that case, the question of whether a Turing machine could in principle emulate consciousness depends on what the cause of consciousness is. It's certainly possible, and doesn't even seem particularly unlikely, that we find that Turing machines cannot do this, and that something other than "computation" is needed.

TuringTest 7y ago
> Yes, we can't falsify that a Turing machine has conscious experience, but we have no reason or explanation to suggest that it does have one. I don't have no reason or explanation that suggests that you have a consciousness either. You could be a very elaborate chatbot that posts coherent replies at online forums. Also, I do know whether I'm a chatbot myself or not, but you can't tell about me just from the replies written here. > We may not "know" of such a thing with certainty, but we have a strong candidate in consciousness. The problem with that is, you don't have a test for consciousness. There's a strong candidate in MRI brain scans (at least for humans), but you can't really be sure.