Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima
From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Testing for machine consciousness
Message-ID: <23@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 12 Oct 90 14:53:24 GMT
References: <7@tdatirv.UUCP> <1990Oct8.120927.8648@canon.co.uk> <21@tdatirv.UUCP> <3324.2713728b@cc.helsinki.fi>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 63

In article <3324.2713728b@cc.helsinki.fi> harmo@cc.helsinki.fi writes:
>In article <21@tdatirv.UUCP>, I write:
 
>> Since
>> this exact copy is indistinguishable in any way from a naturally born human,
>> we can, as a shortcut, say that humans are 'machine-like' in construction.
 
>Well, indistinquishable maybe, but still very different in certain historical
>and conventional respects.

But then so am I, every individual is different in many details.   This, to
me, does not mean they are not conscious.

>A copy of me would not be married to my wife or be father of my children.

True, but he might go out and find his own wife. And father his own children.

>There are many philosophers who would argue that the same applies to
>"consciousness" (eg. Davidson, Sellars). Consciousness is something we
>attribute to creatures partly because they have a certain convention-based
>roles and a certain type of history in the human society. Consciousness of
>animals (if you believe in such) or wolf-babies or representatives of other
>cultures (if you this culture is very different from mine so that I can't
>attribute the proper roles)  is a derived concept, they are not "really"
>conscious.

I think we have rather different concepts of what consciousness is.  However,
I do not see that an artificial duplicate of a human would be unable to enter
into these roles.  he would go out and get a job and do all the other things
people in our culture do.  [We might prevent him from doing so through
prejudice, but this does not imply actual lack of capacity].  

If I were to make a defintion of consciousness along the lines you are
suggesting, I would use the *capacity* to enter into these roles and histories,
rather than any specific instances of them, as the defining characteristic.
There is no real evidence that any normal human is incapable of entering into
any of the various social roles of any society, at least if introduced to them
at a sufficiently early age. And even adults are often capable of adjusting
behavior enough to fit into the social roles of radically different culture,
if the motivation is strong enough.

Hwever, the defintion of conscious I actually use is rather different. It is
that mode of thought in which self-awareness is used to guide reactions.  Or
at least that is an aproximation of what I mean by the word - I find it
difficult to produce a satisfactory precise definition.

>Machine consciousness would be similar to animal consciousness
>unless machines start to grow into proper kinds of roles in society.
>Note that this does not imply  that eg. representatives of other cultures are 
>somehow inferior in information-processing capabilities.

Consciousness is not information processing either, it is more of an attitude
towards reality, or towards the relationship of self to non-self.

A conscious machine would tend to develope roles for itself in society.  They
may well be different than human roles, and it may take us awhile to percieve
these roles as normal in the same way we view eating lunch in a cafe.  But
such changes do take place, computer programming is a totally new role in
society.  [I actually knew one of the very first professional computer
programmers, so it is a *very* new role]
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)