RE: Why materialists are predominantly materialists
September 21, 2016 at 10:33 am
(This post was last modified: September 21, 2016 at 10:35 am by I_am_not_mafia.)
(September 20, 2016 at 11:35 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I can see how a certain algorithm would BEHAVE as a conscious agent. What I can't see is how it would BECOME a conscious agent.
Why not?
If you have an action selection algorithm that responds to inputs and produces certain outputs, then what about if the input was based on the internal state of the agent controller? Why isn't that a form of consciousness?
Consciousness isn't a binary state of something that you have or don't have. Even with humans, some people are more conscious of why they act the way they do than others. It's why some people go to therapy for example, to understand why they are acting the way they do.
Obviously we risk falling into the trap here of arguing over the definition of consciousness and equivocating over its meaning. But from my perspective as someone who creates strong artificial intelligence, I cannot personally find a better or more useful definition of consciousness than being able to sense and adapt to ones own internal state and observations of ones own actions.
You may have a different idea of what consciousness is. But if so then you need to define it if you are going to say that an algorithm couldn't be conscious. And then you'll need to argue that your definition of consciousness cannot be computed.
