Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!canon!rjf
From: rjf@canon.co.uk (Robin Faichney)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Testing for machine consciousness (was Re: emergent properties)
Message-ID: <1990Oct13.112935.9356@canon.co.uk>
Date: 13 Oct 90 11:29:35 GMT
References: <1990Sep29.213139.2876@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <3499@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <1990Oct4.154655.23004@canon.co.uk> <7@tdatirv.UUCP> <1990Oct8.120927.8648@canon.co.uk> <1990Oct11.161350.16127@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Sender: Robin Faichney <rjf@canon.co.uk>
Reply-To: rjf@canon.co.uk
Organization: Canon Research Europe, Guildford, UK
Lines: 47

In article <1990Oct11.161350.16127@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> me@csri.toronto.edu (Daniel R. Simon) writes:
>[..]
>
>My only contribution to the debate was to remark once, half in jest, that I
>had always believed beauty to be in the eye of the beholder.  There was an
>awkward silence, a few people coughed embarrassedly, and after a few moments
>the conversation continued as before.  Until I left, those were the last words
>I dared speak on the subject.

I hate to be the boringly explicit one, especially after such a
delightful allegory as this, but my position is that consciousness is
in the eye of the beholder.

In article <25036@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> phil@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Phil Bogle) writes:
>..With regards
>to intelligence, consciousness as opposed to behavior which merely
>_seems_ conscious makes no difference whatsoever..
>
>The field, after all, is
>AI, not AC.

Absolutely.  But, to go back a little and clarify this: consciousness
is a subjective phenomenon, so the goal would be not to build a
conscious machine, but a machine which people believed to be
conscious.  I think this must be what Turing had in mind.

BUT, this is not the Turing Test -- I personally believe that people
without axes to grind simply will not believe it conscious if they know
it is a machine, no matter what it does.

AND, even if I am wrong on that, subjectivity is not democratic: a
majority of people believing in the consciousness of a machine does not
make it "really" conscious; if you believe in it, then it is so for
you, and if not..

As for intelligence, it is not as clearly a purely subjective
phenomenon as is consciousness, but it would not at all surprise me if,
following an analysis of the concept, we came to the same conclusion.

Of course one of the main implications of all this is that AI should
concern itself as much with the psychology/sociology of the attribution
of consciousness and intelligence as with the internals of the machines..
on the other hand, if they are trying to simulate the human mind, then
they'd have to do that anyway, wouldn't they?  ;-)

Personally, I won't believe it conscious until it is proved that it
believes me conscious!  :-)