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| Brian Ambrose wrote: | | But if you insist that Leon was meaning a type of consciousness that is not self awareness, can you please define exactly what it is. |
I haven't the faintest what Leon meant.....to me....the difference is... if you feel "ashamed" you must be "self conscious" ....if you hear a sound you are "cosncious".....
But as I say I am not a neurobiologist.........
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Grant
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We find it so hard to understand how consciousness exists because the current paradigm says that physical matter gives rise to self-awareness. But it's not possible for this to be true, because in a purely mechanical world there is no place for the consciousness to live.
Imagine a computer which is self-aware. According to Turing and others we live in a computable universe, so this computer, however sophisticated, could be modelled by a mechanism of cogs and wheels - like the Babbage engine in the science museum except the size of a planet. Now, where in this mechanism does consciousness live?
The answer must be that consciousness comes first! We are conscious and we make the universe look the way it does. So we can never explain consciousness by just analysing matter.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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Where does the speed of a motorcycle live in that mechanism?
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| But as I say I am not a neurobiologist......... |
What makes you think they know better than you?
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| If we had the technology, would we ever deliberately create a machine that was self aware? |
That's an easy one: Yes, it's what some geeks live for.
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Brian Ambrose
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| nemesis8 wrote: | | ....to me....the difference is... if you feel "ashamed" you must be "self conscious" ....if you hear a sound you are "conscious"..... |
Then there's nothing to discuss since this would indicate that my PC is already conscious. It can not only hear sound it can interpret it and, for example, convert it to text.
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Unless the real problem is deeper...
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Nope, can't go along with this "consciousness" is always "self conscious"...as my silicon friend is not "self conscious" he is therefore by definition not "conscious" type of argument............
Consciousness and Self Consiousness are not the same.
Consciousness is clearly a precondition for Self Consciousness.
Self Consciousness is not a precondition of Consciousness.
We must answer the question...Why is my silicon friend not conscious...? And the answer cannot be because, he is not self aware.
Either that or we might be forced to concede my silicon friend is indeed conscious.....
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Brian Ambrose
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Nemesis, why do you say you might be forced to concede that your PC is indeed conscious? There can be no argument; by your definition your PC is conscious, as is your mobile phone and the microphone in it. I am quite happy to accept your definition of consciousness, meaningless as it is, please don't now start to agonize over it.
Remember, I have not denied that consciousness may exist separately from self-awareness, only that it is extremely difficult to talk about it meaningfully (as you have demonstrated) and that therefore in the context of this discussion we really mean self-awareness when we talk about consciousness.
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| Brian Ambrose wrote: | | Nemesis, why do you say you might be forced to concede that your PC is indeed conscious? There can be no argument; by your definition your PC is conscious, |
In actual fact I described the difference, as I saw it, between human consciousness and human self consciousness, by giving a couple of examples ....not quite the same thing.
I still believe what I said was correct... but we now need to tackle the question. Why is my silicon friend not conscious?
I have already accepted I cant rely on the distinction which I used to describe human consciousness and self consciousness....as logically the computer would then be conscious......as you have pointed out...
I cant fall back on the computer is not self aware argument, for the reasons stated in my last post.
The answer is..........
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| Brian Ambrose wrote: |
Remember, I have not denied that consciousness may exist separately from self-awareness, only that it is extremely difficult to talk about it meaningfully (as you have demonstrated) and that therefore in the context of this discussion we really mean self-awareness when we talk about consciousness. |
Help me out with this, does "awareness" exist separately from "self awareness?"
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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This thread is a colossal waste of my money.
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Brian Ambrose
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| Ishmael wrote: | | This thread is a colossal waste of my money. |
Excellent! I was beginning to think it was totally useless.
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I had no idea that Ishmael was our benefactor !!
How might we imagine that a computer could become conscious was where this topic/thread started. And it is surely necessary to ensure that we are all talking about the same thing when we use a word such as "consciousness".
I know that my dog, for example, is conscious of her environment. She is also, I can observe, self-motivating, at least to some extent. Is that evidence that she is "self-conscious"? I don't know. But for the purpose of Leon's question perhaps it is better to think about self-motivation rather than self-conciousness. After all we already have devices that are conscious of their environment and are programmed to behave in various pre-set ways depending on changes in that environment.
So what is necessary for a non-biological system to be self-motivating?
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