Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Do you think so? Why or why not? And how would the invention of conscious machines by man influence the understanding of his own consciousness?
Do you think so? Why or why not? And how would the invention of conscious machines by man influence the understanding of his own consciousness?
So machines so far can't do that, so far.
How do you know?
Do you think so? Why or why not? And how would the invention of conscious machines by man influence the understanding of his own consciousness?
Do you think so? Why or why not?
And how would the invention of conscious machines by man influence the understanding of his own consciousness?
These notions you use to define conscious also need clarification.Definition of conscious:
Aware of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.
So machines so far can't do that, so far.
There are machines that can recognise themselves... i.e. they pass the "mirror test" that few animals can.
There are machines that have sensations, or be aware of their surroundings... in fact any machine that has a sensor in it (e.g. a thermostat) passes that test - as a sensor is sensing the surrounding.
So your definition of "conscious" needs some work, I think.
Do you think so? Why or why not? And how would the invention of conscious machines by man influence the understanding of his own consciousness?
These notions you use to define conscious also need clarification.
There are machines that can recognise themselves... i.e. they pass the "mirror test" that few animals can.
There are machines that have sensations, or be aware of their surroundings... in fact any machine that has a sensor in it (e.g. a thermostat) passes that test - as a sensor is sensing the surrounding.
As for "thoughts"... what is a "thought"? One might argue that any internal language is a "thought". Any machine that receives input and passes commands to an output could be said to be "thinking"... e.g. a standard PC.
So your definition of "conscious" needs some work, I think.
Which dictionary? Quote the source, please.My definition? That was the dictionaries if you didn't know. I used it because it is the standard to which we all subscribe to understanding what words mean.
interfaced with or
prosthetically extended from our own consciousness.
We could say that a partially biological construct called the computer-human-construct shows signs that it inherits consciousness from its biological parts (human brain) but also has access to formidable processing power and storage capacity/recall-ability of the computer. But why stop there. Most computers are hooked into the global net, so this individual entity has access to unknown amounts of knowledge and increasing storage capacity.
But lets not stop there, lets get a bit closer to where we need to get here. Is the internet a machine? Is it not just a collection of separate parts linked by wires, that all merge to create a single machine, much as a single computer is also classified as a machine? So all the online computers in the world are hooked up to one entity that is driven by biologically intelligent parts that drive it's learning and evolution. Would we say that the WWW (which I would say is not just a collection of computers linked up but a conscious entity with billions of biological parts as well as machine parts which all work together as seamlessly as any biological life) is not self aware already? Of course it is. It has a collective identity, as well as many collective identities, as well as individual components.
If we were to test the WWW to ascertain whether it is conscious, what would we find? Does this qualify as machine intelligence? I would say it could if we wished to define it as such. Can we separate an entity like the WWW, as in remove the machine component, or the human component, and still expect it to develop as any intelligent entity should? Of course we can't. Therefore this entity which is a machine, a very complex machine, is contingent on the fact that it has these two distinct parts. Therefore the machine that is the internet IS conscious?