Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Chili]

The robot is the sum of its blind deterministic parts. It is mere sloppiness to say that is "aware" in the sense of having a subjective experience.

[Jan Sand]

I find it continuously amusing that some people presume they somehow are privileged to not obey the established laws that everything else in the universe must follow. It's not worth any effort to attempt to convince them otherwise.

[Chili]

This "presumption" - do they *choose* it or is it unavoidable ? Are they conscious? Are they agents? How do you know ?

[Jan Sand]

On the average the people, dogs, cats, crows and various other animals I encounter behave as if they are conscious. The average oyster and pine tree, and a few others may be conscious but conversations here are rather difficult to evoke intelligible response. Onions respond to extreme cruelty by making me cry in contravention to the potatoes I peel who respond rather feebly if at all. Somewhat like apples.

[Jan Sand]

To get more to the point, although many living creatures are presumed to be merely automatic with no consciousness in the degree attributed to people, the mechanics of consciousness are quite useful in operating for sustainment and reproduction in the world and since the brain must formulate a useful sense of reality out of simple sensory input, it has little other means to make sense of existence. Even humans can only model a simplified model of reality within which they create a representation of themselves which they call consciousness. Evolution requires only the basics of this system for successful living but that is quite enough, An article at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 142234.htm indicates that even fish display consciousness so it is unlikely to be rare

[Chili]

You don't know what they believe, only how they behave. It is a small step to stop saying "humans can model" to "humans do model" to the parts of humans fall like dominoes or stones in an avalanche to create the behavior or modeling. Sponges respond to extreme cruelty by dripping water when you give them a kick. Are you contemplating the issue of reductionism ?

[Wayne92587]

Consciousness, Likened to a state of mind that is bound to Realities that have no mass, such as Illusion, the imagination.

The Imagination is not physical (or reducible to the Physical.

[Jan Sand]

I have a firm and dynamic connection to my imagination so that whenever I close my eyes I can see it accessibg memory and producing endless varieties of the last scene that was rendered with my visual system. It is visual confirmation that my imagination is very much integrated into my central neural complex. I have questioned others and it seems this neural dynamicis not commonplace but it confirms that this activity which I have found very useful as a designer was something I have used all my life. I have no illusion about it's non-phisicality. I cannot speak for anyone else but for me there is nothing mysterious.

[Chili]

How do you conclude you have a brain or "neural complex" ?

[Jan Sand]

I would be a rather unusual human if I operated more or less normally without a brain and nervous system.. The probability is rather great that I have both.

[Burning ghost]

The robot is the sum of its blind deterministic parts. It is mere sloppiness to say that is "aware" in the sense of having a subjective experience.

How do you conclude that there are such things as “robots”?

An argument from solipsism is all you’re proposing. Generally speaking if someone resorts to arguing from this position it’s because they’ve ran out of things to say and/or want to avoid a difficult question (are you one of those?).

[Jan Sand]

Since it is most useful to assume that the nature of the universe functions on deterministic principles. then these principles should be discoverable and useful in further investigation. The assumption that something operates under principles not understandable is a block to any further investigation and frustrates all attempts at investigation.It's an acceptance of total defeat.

[Jan Sand]

There is an excellent presentation of brain structure and activity at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enSy28rBIIM where in current examinations of various brain activities are revealed. What struck me as pertinent to this discussion was a final look at the brain awake and asleep and the indication that the difference between the conscious and unconscious brain is that the conscious brain coordinated the major portions of the brain and the unconscious brain is equally active but the various different brain centers do not coordinate in as large a degree. Obviously an awake brain is one that must detect and recognise and analyze what may be going on in the exterior world in order to successfully survive. Consciousness then is a state of brain activity, not any particular specific organ of the brain. This makes great and obvious sense to me and indicates that as robotic brains are made more aware of themselves and the outer world they will obtain a larger degree of consciousness .

[Karpel Tunnel]

Or consciousness is an emergent property tied to carbon compounds and will never arise with silicon based ones, though we won't know it since the robots will function with intelligence but have no consciousenss.

Or...

The degree of consciousness is not related to intelligence or functions. Consciousness should be separated out from functions. Consciousness is experiencing. That there is an experiencing of reality. The conscoius entity may have many cognitive functions or perhaps few. Perhaps clams have an incredibly deep but simply experiencing. We would be overwhelmed if for a moment we experienced as much as a clam does second by second. Or not.

But we don't really know and it's all rather speculative.

[Jan Sand]

According to what I've understood of brain dynamics and the needs of a living creature in surviving and reproducing, to look for consciousness in one small part of the whole is like listening to a wonderful symphony by a huge orchestra and askng what particular instrument made that great sound. You need the whole damned thing working together in a specified coordinated way to obtain that piece of music. That you can get that sound out of a recording on a magnetic tape does not mean that magnetic tape is musical and all you need for great music is magnetic tape. It's not that idiotically simple.