Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!canon!rjf From: rjf@canon.co.uk (Robin Faichney) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Testing for machine consciousness (was Re: emergent properties) Message-ID: <1990Oct8.120927.8648@canon.co.uk> Date: 8 Oct 90 12:09:27 GMT References: <1990Sep29.213139.2876@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <3499@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <1990Oct4.154655.23004@canon.co.uk> <7@tdatirv.UUCP> Sender: Robin Faichney Reply-To: rjf@canon.co.uk Organization: Canon Research Europe, Guildford, UK Lines: 44 In article <7@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes: >In article <1990Oct4.154655.23004@canon.co.uk> rjf@canon.co.uk (I) wrote: >>[ saying that just because certain functions are associated with >> consciousness in us, does not mean that the presence of such >> functions is evidence for consciousness in machines ] > >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. OK, I know this thread was originally about emergence, and I neglected til now to change the Subject line, but that is not what I was talking about! What I meant was, we associate consciousness particularly with short-term memory, for instance, but it would (I guess) be relatively easy to implement a machine with short-term memory which functioned just like ours, though the machine was not conscious. The same argument applies to any other function. So, if not by its functioning, how else can we tell whether a machine is conscious? >> -- 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. No we don't. Because (a) some people would argue that maybe we're not really conscious, we just think we are (I personally do not think this position worth dealing with) and (b) you have just redefined "machine". In such discussions we have to distinguish between natural human beings on one hand and artefacts made by them on the other, in order to compare their qualities. Normally, the word "machines" is used for the artefacts. To attempt to blur the distinction merely by deciding to call people machines, is a tactic hardly worthy of this refutation. It tells us absolutely nothing about either humans, or consciousness, or machines. BTW, I'd still be interested in hearing whether anyone has a test for machine consciousness..