(November 28, 2012 at 2:02 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Yeah, I can see that, making something different by defining it as such. If I use my own consciousness as the measuring stick then I can definitively say that a dogs consciousness isn't "genuine"..it's unlike my own. Does that make a dog AI (or in a similar class of things as AI)? But perhaps more strangely, if my consciousness was the bar for the genuine article....would those who have their consciousness somehow impaired (relative to myself) be "less genuine" than I. Would those with damage to their consciousness then be somehow similar to dogs..or AI? As we bring the lens further in...would those "less intelligent" - as a part of that consciousness- than myself have a "less genuine" sort of consciousness?
Granted, the two aren't the same thing- but we'd have to be able to identify a consciousness before we could examine how it works. Bit of a viscious circle, because then we have to ask -how do we identify consciousness. By reference to how it works? Or the effect "it" produces? If two things produce a similar effect through different means does it really make sense to consider one of them genuine and the other artificial?
Well an early Disney "automaton" parrot could sound and move like a real parrot. How do I know it doesn't experience what a real parrot experiences? Cause they weren't designed for that. Now the rock I unthinkingly skip over the pond may be terrified for all I know. But I don't think so and find no reason to think so. If some one were to hollow out a rock and imbed a speaker so it could scream bloody murder while it skimmed the pond, I still would not think it actually had any experience going on inside that corresponded to what was coming out of its speaker.
A dog has its consciousness as do other real blood and guts critters, or so I suppose. A mussel clinging to a rock no doubt has some experience of its environment .. and ever so much more than any robot or computer program is ever likely to have. Why? Because, so far at least, consciousness has only ever been found in association with neurons. (I have no knock down argument for thinking consciousness will never be found in any other environment than brain tissue .. but that seems to me to be how things stand.)
