Quote Originally Posted by Sandform View Post
I pretty much agree with you completely. My only point is that it is entirely possible there are beings out there with workings different than ours which may exhibit near parallel actions as ours even though they have no real "consciousness" to speak of.

If a human being can create a machine which will more or less be capable of comprehending things without consciousness and seeming near humanlike, and certainly animal like, then I don't see a reason why evolution couldn't the same.

So my only point is that until we know what exactly makes a thing conscious we could never know for sure whether alien beings are conscious or absolute perfect mimics of consciousness. For all we know we could be fooled just as easily as someone fooled by a robotic human...except evolution molded this creature vs. human minds.

I think (as well I think you do as well) that consciousness arises from patterning. Now if something could be patterned differently, in a way that mimics but does not produce consciousness, there would be no difference between capabilities between the two. Even an appearant "imagination" could be formed. After all computers have "imaginations." Heck the sims will have your characters create entire lives without you even looking...


I'm assuming your point is that massive processes lead to consciousness while smaller processes do not. I would agree, since we both know that is
putting it simplistically I really don't have to go on about speed and modules...

Of course from the paragraph in which you said "So I suppose it follows that consciousness isn't really a boolean term: conscious, or not conscious" it would seem that you think anything capable of reason is conscious...which would mean that you would think that computers (in some sense) are conscious. (edit: Which I disagree with. I do not think computers are conscious, though I have no supporting evidence that they aren't, I see no supporting evidence that they are.)
Ah, yes, you happened to bring up a couple of things that I forgot to mention.

I think it is possible for a Turning machine to recreate the exact actions of a human (given enough work) but without having any consciousness. There are two things I have to say about this though: Firstly, I think it is because they have been designed and manually programmed (analogous I suppose to your Sims example) to make certain actions. The second point though seems to present a sort of paradox (let's call it Zoto's paradox so I feel all scientific ) is that the "reasoning" the actual program has to make to calculate the agent's next action would have to be very similar to the reasoning that we make, even if it is executed differently. The fact that we know so little about consciousness and whether it's the actual reasoning that goes into it, or the method of which the reasoning goes into it is disputable.

My other point is related to what I said about design. I don't think a computer is conscious (in self awareness terms), but it is certainly capable of some reasoning. Imagine a processor as the brain. If you stuck in a webcam and put your computer out in the wild to survive (yes we can assume it can mate and pass down genes, etc, even if they are formatted differently to ours), then, if the processor within the first few generations was able to survive without our aid, would you then consider it conscious? I still don't know what to think of that.

Luckily though, a processor of this type doesn't just evolve. I think that the easiest way in Darwinian terms is through neural networks, which I believe can create consciousness, but as I said, not in boolean terms. The more complex (in technical terms, as I described earlier), the more conscious. You can see this in the fly example I mentioned (fly trying to get through glass).