Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!helios!n025fc From: n025fc@tamuts.tamu.edu (Kevin Weller) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: emergent properties Message-ID: Date: 8 Oct 90 03:10:06 GMT References: <1990Sep29.213139.2876@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <3499@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <1990Oct4.154655.23004@canon.co.uk> Sender: usenet@helios.TAMU.EDU Organization: /tamu/Au/n025fc/.organization Lines: 25 In-reply-to: rjf@canon.co.uk's message of 4 Oct 90 15:46:55 GMT In article <1990Oct4.154655.23004@canon.co.uk> rjf@canon.co.uk (Robin Faichney) writes: ...................................... My problem is that I cannot imagine any counter-argument to this -- 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. 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. 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 can't discern your exact position on the issue here. Are you saying that you don't see sufficient evidence that *other* *people* are conscious? If not, how can you claim that no evidence would ever be sufficient to decide that a machine is conscious? If someday someone builds an android that looks just like a person and *acts* just like a person, how could you tell the difference? ESP? :-) -- Kev