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From: krista@wonderwoman.hut.fi (Krista Hannele Lagus)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Cognitive viruses (was: Re: Conciousness)
Message-ID: <1991Apr25.101622.18056@santra.uucp>
Date: 25 Apr 91 10:16:22 GMT
References: <1991Apr18.120150.10001@santra.uucp>
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Reply-To: krista@niksula.hut.fi (Krista Hannele Lagus)
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Lines: 23

I wrote:
>Yeah, I've been trying this self-awareness....and I can be at most 3 
>times aware of being aware of myself...

My point (which I'm sure was not very obvious) was to question
our goal and motives in determining whether computers can be 
self- conscious/aware.   Are we just always looking for a
discriminating factor that shows the difference between human
consciousness and that of a computer, so that we can say that
computers are not self-aware or intelligent whichever attribute is in
question?   For there will always be *differences* between computers
and humand, I would suspect.  It seems to me that often those who
oppose the self-awareness (or anything else) of computers, require
from computers everything that is required from human intelligence,
plus all the infinite awareness stuff etc. Also, we will always come
up with things that the computer "can't do and thus it can't be this
and that, it is worse than people in some respect".  How about
defining once and for good what we expect from awareness and sticking
with it? 

The motive for this is, I think, that people have so weak egos that
they cannot accept something manmade to be above them in any
"important" respect.