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I apply the same reasoning as you to consciousness for entities such as animals, whose biology is reasonably close to our own. I don’t think the same can be app
by mypastself 4y ago
I apply the same reasoning as you to consciousness for entities such as animals, whose biology is reasonably close to our own. I don’t think the same can be applied to software.
Cargo cults that developed in the Southwest Pacific after WWII reportedly attempted to emulate rituals performed by U.S. military personnel such as landing signals, believing they’ll bring back the aircraft that had been giving them gifts.
Similarly, believing that a program will possess consciousness if we provide it with some of its external manifestations seems backwards.
Of course, the problem is that we don’t know what consciousness is. Until we do, I’ll keep assuming we don’t have the proficiency to create it under such different conditions just yet.
- oezi 4y agoIsn't consciousness just the ability to observe some part of the brain's processes and use it as another kind of sensory input to thinking?
- mypastself 4y agoIt’s tough for me to define consciousness as “just” anything, but its indefinability is in fact the main part of the problem.
- uwagar 4y agoit occured to me once that those cargo cults could be parodying the US military personnel's deep addiction to things like guns, bombs and aircraft instead of being fully plugged/merged into nature.