Could a Robot be Conscious?

[jayjacobus]

How does the robot know that the apple is sweet. It has no experience with sweet. It says the apple is sweet because it looks up the description of apples.

[commonsense]

How does the robot know that the apple is sweet. It has no experience with sweet. It says the apple is sweet because it looks up the description of apples.

The robot would sense sweetness by chemically testing the apple for sweet substances, e.g. glucose. But this still leaves the problem of how the robot could recognize that glucose is sweet. I have not resolved this substancially. The best solution to the problem actually turns out to be a look-up of information defining sweetness.

[commonsense]

OK, OK, I hear you, 1x0, Atla, Brian, Dontaskme, jayjacobus, Londoner, Noax, Science Fan and Walker. Your arguments are powerful and convincing. You have long ago converted me to your reasoning. I continued to address you, though, not to debate you, but to solicit your ideas about questions that troubled me.

I am still troubled by one question that remains.

How come if we are going to assume consciousness in each other, even though we take this assumption without empirical evidence, how come we deny consciousness might exist in robots? After all, robots merely imitate our behavior, yet without empirical evidence we cannot know whether they may or may not have awareness.

I’m just saying, how do we resolve this?

I agree, we cannot know that other people have consciousness. See 'P Zombies'. We only posit they do because it explains the various way they behave. But robots do not behave like us, so we have a different explanation as to why robots do what they do. We can say that robots are 'aware' but what would we mean, since we already have a complete explanation for robot behaviour that doesn't need the addition of 'awareness'.

Otherwise, are we discussing a hypothetical robot that behaves just like a human? Then I agree, a robot that behaves exactly like a human would be indistinguishable from a human. But they don't.

I should have made clear that I have had a hypothetical robot in mind throughout the thread.

[commonsense]

Both the brain and the robot process information. The end results for the brain are senses. The end result for the robot are definitions. Humans get to definitions not through processing but by perceiving the meaning of something. In other words it is not the brain that perceives but consciousness.
Besides I know the meaning of everything I see without naming what I see. I apprehend. The robot processes. Moreover all my sense are always available although my attention is focused. I perceive a whole from which I choose to notice specific items. The robot works from the ground up. For a robot to get to the whole it identifies each separate item.
Biology is a factor because machines aren't conscious.

I believe I’ve come around to the point of view that a robot cannot possess consciousness, and you, jayjaycobus, have played no small part in my transformation. Still, I need to explain my earlier misguided beliefs:

I have been using a very narrow, secondary definition for ‘sense’, referencing what goes on at the site of a receptor. It would have made sense to use the word to mean awareness or consciousness, as MW indicates.

[jayjacobus]

Thank you for the acknowledgment.

Just a few words to emphasize what robots do:

They extract patterns in lightwaves and combine patterns into a geometry. They look up the geometry. They don't see.

In fact light and all appearances are created by the brain and not by an electronic instrument.

[jayjacobus]

Nagel is wrong. There is a materialistic system that creates the experience that goes to the subjective interpretation. A bat experiences reality differently then humans because the bat's brain creates senses in a different form than human brains. The two brains create different models of reality. They aren't the same model with different subjective interpretations.

This leads to the (unprovable) hypothesis that the bat's consciousness is the same as the human's consciousness but the two brains are the only difference.

[jayjacobus]

I suspect that I am not making my point.

When you see something, is the appearance in your Homunculus, in reality or both? It has to be in your Homunculus at least. Otherwise it wouldn't be discernible.

[jayjacobus]

What if a robot harms me, how is he liable? Or is the owner of the robot liable, or the manufacture of the robot or the programmer of the robot or the language creator of the robot. Is it even possible to sue a robot if he defames me? Of course I'm not going to sue. Am I stupid?

[jayjacobus]

Can you even identify which robot harmed you? They can all have the same face, the same fingerprints; the same irises and can have fictitious names.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hSPKsBZkME

[jayjacobus]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hSPKsBZkME

Great video, thanks.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

You're welcome jay.

[gaffo]

Brian King says only if some specific conditions are met.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/125/Co ... _Conscious

no, only simulated consciousness IMO.

what AI is all about - a glorified toaster.

[gaffo]

Brian King says only if some specific conditions are met.

Brian seems to make the classic anthropocentric mistake of assuming that if it is not just like us, it isn't conscious.

likewise it is anthropomophic to think that a robot with the looks of man and programming of act like one - humor, mind, fear,etc...........all via programing.

to be "conscious"/"alive" because to appear so appeals to your sense of humanity.

when its is just an abvance toaster designed to appeal to your sense of humanity - to convince you that "it" is "alive".

just flip the switch, its not murder.

[Sir-Sister-of-Suck]

It's an extraordinarily complicated question, involving a science we definitely do understand very well (engineering) and a field we definitely do not have a great understanding of (neurology)

I guess as the article describes it, I lean towards the viewpoint of functionalism. But it's not exactly because I believe there's something specifically special about biological organisms over machines, it's more about taking a position of skepticism based on the lack of evidence; I haven't been given any reason why a machine could replicate consciousness, anymore than I have been given reason to think that cooking a duck inside of a turkey would replicate consciousness. There are a lot of people who automatically make a parallel between animal intelligence and an algorithm, and assume there's a relevant similarity between them. But I don't think they even know what actually needs to be similar.