Quote Originally Posted by tkdyo View Post
wouldnt it imply that they are concious if we can communicate ideas with them and consider theirs and possibly argue? Baring of course that they have instead sent some very sophisticated AI to talk to us.
Ah but what makes an AI different than a human being? Which is my point. If consciousness is something understandable then creating a conscious machine shouldn't be a problem. Thus your assumption that the AI itself wouldn't be conscious is in itself a false statement. The reason it is my point (because I don't think I have clarified) is that if we as humans have been able to create machines that can actually fool people into believing they are communicating with a human being (It has been done on computer chatting before) then the very notion that something made of separate components than ourselves as conscious is important to discuss. What is it that makes a human being conscious? I would say it is the patterning in our brains, which would lead to the possibility of differently compiled entities to have consciousness. However we have created technology that is by definition "intelligent" because it can solve problems (Turing machines such as computers are examples of intelligent tech.) however isn't "conscious."

Quote Originally Posted by Zotoaster View Post
That's a very fair point. I can't claim to know exactly what consciousness is, since it is very abstract and "air-y", but I can say it's not "made of" anything, it is basically a product of the processes in our brain. I believe it has something to do with the complexity of how our neurons work. Defining complexity, I think it's when neurons don't fire completely randomly, or fire at the same time by coincidence, but when they do have patterns coming up, and, specifically, complex patterns (this time "complex" really is used in layman's terms). For this reason I can't say that my processor or, for a better example, some cellular automata programs (look up "Conway's Game of Life" for an excellent example) aren't also conscious, but in a different way to us. But I digress. I think if we are to look for something like it, it shouldn't be consciousness exactly, and perhaps not even self-awareness. If they are able to use reasoning, logic, maths, etc, then that should be satisfactory. Furthermore, if they want to find us, they must have some sort of imaginations (which, if organisms with some form of brain of "processor" does arise, I suppose imagination would follow, as it is useful for planning ahead, which is useful in Darwinian terms... Very useful infact).
As for not "made of" anything, I don't know if that was in reference to something I said or not, I do not believe consciousness is directly related to the physical components that it is made of. By this I mean that something other than what is known to be the proponent of consciousness is, at least I leave the option open, capable of being something other than what we have currently observed. (I apologize for use of the word proponent but it was the only word I could use to closely articulate what I was trying to get at.)

I have observed debates on this as to "why" consciousness arose in life, because wouldn't something without consciousness that acted exactly as if it were conscious survive just as long? This becomes the core of the problem with alien life. Are they conscious or are they unconscious things that seem conscious. Further more is all life on Earth conscious? Of course we can assume with no great leap of faith to assume that any animal with a brain is conscious, since it runs in the same fashion as ours, however until we narrow down to an exact knowledge of what consciousness is, or rather how it arises, we can never know for sure if an alien life form that shares no common ancestry with us would in fact be conscious. For that matter we could never be sure of an AI's consciousness. I have no doubts that if we communicate with alien life it would be intelligent, in the same way as our current computers are, however I would remain healthily skeptical as to the consciousness of such a being, excluding of course the possibility that it developed a brain exactly, or near enough, as ours.