[alicebot-aiethics] ZOMBIES

[Christopher Fahey [askROM]]

> > What if a computer already has achieved the state of consciousness, 
> > and just lacks the means to tell us? And I don't mean 
> making a program 
> > like Alice. The hardware -itself-? Maybe consciousness is just a 
> > by-product of milions of logical gates doing their work (or 
> > braincells). We will never know, since we are so fundamentally 
> > different from microchips that communication on any level 
> will never 
> > be possible.


Well, to me any definition of consciousness that is totally inexplicable
in human terms (like what you allude to) is impossible for us to
discuss, and is thus another red herring. The only definition of
consciousness that we can meaningfully discuss is a definition that we
can actually make using terms that we can all as humans agree on. 

What I'm saying is this: It ain't a consciousness like a human
consciousness if it cant at the very least claim to us humans that it's
conscious. A rock may be conscious by some alternative definition, but
such a definition would be far too alien to me. I prefer definitions
that relate to human experience. 

Turing's point was, IMHO, that it doesn't matter what the machine
thinks: all that matters is what we think. If Alice claims to be
sentient, and a half dozen people claim to have loving relationships
with Alice that surpass the depth of their relationships with other
humans, then who cares what Alice says about its/her own consciousness?
By extension, then, consciousness itself is just another subjective
human idea like truth or beauty, a meaningless term defined exclusively
in relation to individual human experience.

-Cf