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From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: emergent properties
Message-ID: <7@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 5 Oct 90 15:52:40 GMT
References: <1990Sep29.213139.2876@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <3499@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <1990Oct4.154655.23004@canon.co.uk>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 48

In article <1990Oct4.154655.23004@canon.co.uk> rjf@canon.co.uk writes:
>
>  I had occasion
>several years ago to look into work on consciousness by experimental
>psychologists, and I came to the conclusion that though it is obvious
>that certain functions are closely associated with consciousness in us,
>the presence of such functions in a machine would not be sufficient
>evidence that the machine was conscious.  Simply because it could
>always be asserted that in the machine, the functions were being
>performed by an unconscious mechanism.  My problem is that I cannot
>imagine any counter-argument to this:

The conunter-argument is simple.  This is also true of the human brain!
No individual neural mechanism in the brain is conscious, nor is any
individual subsystem in the brain conscious.  Consciousness is the result
of the sum of the activities and interactions of many components and
mechanisms within the brain.  Thus if implementation via unconscious parts
denies consciousness, then *we* are not conscious either, we just think we
are.

> -- if we agree that no current
>machine is conscious, why should we believe any future machine to be so
>-- it could perform indistinguishably from a person, while being
>"nothing but" an unconscious object.

Because we do not agree that no current machine is conscious - we all agree
that the human machine is indeed conscious.  [Note this is still true even if
an essential part of the implementation depends on quantum uncertainty or
chaotic unpredictability, since both are essentially physical mechanisms]

>This is why I think that deciding that something is conscious --
>whether that thing is your kid brother, your PC, or an android which
>has fooled you that it's your mother -- says more about you than about
>the thing your're talking about.

You're probably right here.

>Seriously, though (and maybe I should say that I haven't looked at
>comp.ai in a couple of years), what could ever be sufficient evidence
>for machine consciousness?

I, personally, would be convinced by the robot described in the open letter
posted to comp.ai a short time ago.  At least if I knew its implementation
was essentially as described.  [It is interesting that the mechanism the
author described are ones that I have long thought central to sentience!]

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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)