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> I'm not sure if panpsychism is necessarily a path forward in terms of describing the universe, but I think it seems promising in terms of a prescriptive use o
by excalibur 7y ago
> I'm not sure if panpsychism is necessarily a path forward in terms of describing the universe, but I think it seems promising in terms of a prescriptive use of creating, or attempting to create, new consciousness with machines.
If panpsychism is correct, then all of our machines would already be conscious. Creating new consciousness wouldn't be possible except maybe in the sense that matter itself can be created under certain conditions. What I think you're trying to say is that it might be possible to assemble machines in such a way that a combined "machine consciousness" emerges from the separate low-level consciousnesses of its components. Which may or may not happen with every machine anyway, I'm not sure how you would devise an experiment to test for this.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- keiferski 7y ago> If panpsychism is correct, then all of our machines would already be conscious. Creating new consciousness wouldn't be possible except maybe in the sense that matter itself can be created under certain conditions. Right. In this case, the goal would be to "increase" the consciousness, rather than create it. > What I think you're trying to say is that it might be possible to assemble machines in such a way that a combined "machine consciousness" emerges from the separate low-level consciousnesses of its components. Which may or may not happen with every machine anyway, I'm not sure how you would devise an experiment to test for this. Essentially, yes. I meant that the model of panpsychism might serve as a useful as a blueprint to create artificial minds from the accumulation of low-level components, even if it isn't necessarily useful as a scientific model of the universe.