Do computers have consciousness?

[Crulax]

As another computer science major - and now also philosophy major - I have to say that I think what you said is bullshit. For starters, we don't even know what consciousness is. If I recall correctly, one of the things we do know is that the current evidence is against consciousness being, at base, a sort of purely algorithmic process, which if true would seem to nix the possiblity of achieving our sort of consciousness by the way of computation as we currently do it.

Secondly, computer scientists (and neurobiologists as well) have been trumpeting the "20 years off!" claim about computer-based consciousness since more than 20 years before I was even born. Further, computer scientists and neurobiologist have, until the last couple of decades, had rather simplistic ideas about what consciousness is. One major example from the latter group that comes to mind was Francis Crick's earlier views on it, which grew MUCH more informed when he realized that the topic of consciousness has very hard questions, and decided to consult philosophers of mind like Daniel Dennett and the Churchlands to gain valuable insights.
As for computer scientists, one example that comes to mind was back in, I think, the 70s or 80s when they created a program which could (if I remember correctly) output coherent stories in English. And many of those CSs claimed that such meant that the computers were conscious. This is, I think, what the famous "Chinese Room" thought experiment was a response to and is usually considered to have debunked at least that naivety. The short of it is that if you place someone in a room with English to Chinese dictionaries and pass them cards telling them to pass out the proper cards containing the requested English-to-Chinese translation, does that person actually UNDERSTAND Chinese, or are they merely shuffling and passing around symbols? Self-evidently the latter, I think.


As for my own views on consciousness, I'm not sure. I've actually been reading up on it lately and I'm, perhaps unsurprisingly, finding myseld arching towards the position of philosopher of mind/cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett, while still remaining skeptical of certain kinds of claims about consciousness.

You're right in that I don't know that it will happen in the next 20 years but I remain hopeful with some of the advances that are being made in computing! I will continue this conversation at a later date as you gave me some research to do.