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> We get a more elegant situation if we suppose that consciousness is a necessary side effect of creatures like us. Agreed. I never understood the zombie disti

• simonh 5y ago
  The question there is what exactly, and very specifically do you mean by 'thinking'. We perform very complex intellectual tasks completely subconsciously all the time, without any concious awareness that we're doing them. Driving a car, while listening to the radio for example. Playing football or any complex sport at the highest level is done very largely on autopilot. Grandmasters playing chess, or Go, don't consciously think through every possible permutation of move, yet they can out play extremely sophisticated algorithms. Huge swathes of the cognitive load on these very sophisticated tasks is subconscious, so clearly those tasks must in principle be doable by entities not capable of consciousness. We don't yet know where the boundaries are between tasks that do and don't involve consciousness, if there are any.
  • bryan0 5y ago
    > We perform very complex intellectual tasks completely subconsciously all the time, without any conscious awareness that we're doing them I think the problem with this line of reasoning is that it implies consciousness is binary. There are various levels of awareness and experience.
    • simonh 5y ago
      I think that's fair, it's a very complex phenomenon.