Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!dimacs.rutgers.edu!rutgers!usc!wuarchive!decwrl!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!mcsun!ukc!canon!rjf From: rjf@canon.co.uk (Robin Faichney) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Definition of (was Re: Testing for []) consciousness Message-ID: <1990Oct27.095914.10336@canon.co.uk> Date: 27 Oct 90 09:59:14 GMT References: <27608@usc.edu> <1990Oct22.150143.13858@canon.co.uk> <3331@aipna.ed.ac.uk> <1990Oct25.085556.12119@canon.co.uk> <3374@aipna.ed.ac.uk> <15438@venera.isi.edu> Sender: Robin Faichney Reply-To: rjf@canon.co.uk Organization: Canon Research Europe, Guildford, UK Lines: 79 In article <15438@venera.isi.edu> smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) writes: >In article <3374@aipna.ed.ac.uk> cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes: >>In article <1990Oct25.085556.12119@canon.co.uk> rjf@canon.co.uk writes: >> >>>So the question "can we ever build a conscious machine" is functionally >>>equivalent to the question "can we ever build a machine with which >>>people are willing to socialise". >> >>Yes, I think you're right. >>[..] >> >>This puts a new light on the Turing test, too: we should not be >>struggling to build a machine that will confuse a misguided sophist >>about whether or not it has certain properties (which the sophist >>mistakenly supposes to *justify* the ascription of varieties of >>mentality); rather we should be trying to build machines with which >>people can have useful relationships -- a much simpler task. >> >I have no trouble with this argument; but I think it points out that, as we >continue to observe about "intelligence," the word "consciousness" has a wide >variety of interpretations. Therefore, we have to be very careful about trying >to collapse all those interpretations into a single word. We certainly have to be very careful. That does not mean that there is no point in attempting to agree on a single, clear definition. >[..] >Consider, for example, >issues of introspection. One school of thought argues that one of the things >which makes us conscious is our ability to introspect upon our experiences and >to engage that introspection as part of our behavior. This is something which >separates us from lower forms of animal life. Introspection makes us conscious? It separates us from the lower forms of animal life? This to me indicates that the concept of consciousness is being used as nothing but a symbol of our being in some way "special". Some people seem to feel that the things which distinguish us from other species have all sorts of undefined significance. In particular, some hold that there is one such distinction (though they differ as to what it is) which is our essential feature. Whatever "essential" means here -- I don't know. But to use consciousness in this way is to abuse a concept which could be of great use both within AI and elsewhere. (A personal note: I find it quite amusing that some of those who argue that we are in no way special with regard to physical systems in general, nevertheless hold our differences from other animals to be of almost religious signicance. If I were into psychoanalysis.. ;-) Now consciousness is commonly used to mean two different but related things: one is what we have been discussing here, which is something like sentience. The other is where a person is deemed to be conscious as opposed to unconscious. It seems to me that it is possible to bring these two meanings together by saying that the former is simply the capacity for, or a generalisation of, the latter. If a thing is sentient, it has the capacity for consciousness, and if it is conscious then it is by definition sentient. Consciousness may be used loosely as a synonym for sentience, whereas the strict usage is the simple awareness of a subject of experience. And I doubt if you'll find a dictionary definition which diverges radically from this. So introspection would not make us conscious; on the contrary, consciousness would be necessary but not sufficient for introspection. Similarly, self-awareness (which I take to be at least roughly the same as self-consciousness) would be possible only for a conscious being, but not implied by consciousness. Granted, some people would have to change their views for this usage to prevail. But I would say that it is closer to the ordinary usage than some definitions we have seen recently, and that this is highly significant: we are discussing psychosocial phenomena here, and the common usage arose and persisted because it reflected psychological reality. *Some* naive psychology, evolving as it did within a psychosocial context, is actually quite accurate, especially when it is unconscious! (Sorry, couldn't resist that! ;-) Of course, none of this helps us understand these things like introspection which some believe should be lumped in with consciousness. But, in clarifying one of the issues involved, it looks like a step in the right direction.