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what idiocy! machines can never be conscious because they are not alive. they can only simulate a conscious being—and not very well at that.
by adyashakti 1y ago
what idiocy! machines can never be conscious because they are not alive. they can only simulate a conscious being—and not very well at that.
- brookst 1y agoThat’s what logicians call circular reasoning. If they were conscious, we’d call them alive. Or do you mean biological? Biology is just chemistry and electricity.
- kazinator 1y agoThe main problem is that consciousness is not well-defined, and not in a way that is testable. Even without that, we are probably safe in saying that much of life is not conscious, like bacteria. Even humans in deep sleep or under anesthesia might not be conscious (i.e. subjectively report not being able to report experiences to account for the time, and reporting a severely distorted sense of the elapsed interval). It appears that life is not a sufficient condition for consciousness, so aren't we getting ahead of ourselves if we insist it is a necessary condition?
- kaashif 1y agoIf a computer can perfectly simulate a human brain, and I gradually replace my brain with computers, when do I cease being conscious?
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoBut you’ve already conceded it’s a simulation, so never. The simulation is behavioral. As Searle (and Kripke, respectively) rightly points out, computers are abstract mathematical formalisms. There is nothing physical about them. There is no necessary physical implementation for them. The physical implementation isn’t, strictly speaking, a computer in any objective sense, and the activity it performs is not objectively computation in any sense. Rather, we have constructed a machine that can simulate the formalism such that when we interpret its behavior, we can relate it to the formalism. The semantic content is entirely in the eye of the beholder. In this way, computers are like books in that books don’t actually contain any semantic content, only some bits of pigmentation arranged on cellulose sheets according to some predetermined interpretive convention that the reader has in his mind. We can’t do this with mind, though. The mind is the seat of semantics and it’s where the buck stops.
- the_gipsy 1y agoThey conceded it's a simulation of the brain, not that it cannot behave like a brain.
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoSimulation is to behave in a manner that appears like the real thing, so I don't understand your claim.
- the_gipsy 1y ago"Appearance" or "behavior" here could be the consciousness itself, until we find out what the specific relevant implementation parts are.