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will androids dream of electric sheep? by Alex Burns (alex@disinfo.com) - April 24, 2001 |
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| Is robotic consciousness possible? The answer is, simply, yes – without any qualification or reservation. Contemporary philosophers and scientists have converged on the view that all mental phenomena have their respective physical correlates and substrates. Or simply put, the mental is ultimately physical. Depending on one's philosophical commitment, how this correspondence is achieved may be conceived differently. But the relatively minor difference does not affect the shared idea that, some day, certain robots will be endowed with certain structures and certain processes will be able to achieve consciousness at least comparable to that of humans, with all its intricacies, power, and frailties – although such structures and processes that give rise to consciousness may be extremely comp-lex or vastly different from our current (rudimentary) understanding of the physical and the mental. We are at the threshold of a truly great advancement in our knowledge of the world and our conception of humanity – we shall soon be forced to look at ourselves and other forms of existence in some whole new light. While the work being carried out by me and my associates here attempts to find the right substrates underlying various human cognitive abilities and correct some long-held misconceptions of the human mind, through both human and machine experiments in innovative ways, more work on the ethnological, social and cultural aspects of consciousness is also needed and will be tackled. Dr Ron Sun. Department of computer science, University of Alabama, USA. The question is so silly that I think any effort put into a response would have negative value to society. As an afterthought – I think your editor is a fool. John McCarthy, Professor, artificial intelligence, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA. There will never be artificial, human-made androids with precisely human-like consciousness. But there will, perhaps, be androids having their own consciousness, or even self-awareness, which will be (at least as long as it will be similar to your consciousness and will not start an autonomous evolution) a sub-branch of our consciousness, an external projection of our consciousness – its attributes and interpolations – onto the machine, if the following conditions are satisfied: Of course, contemporary computers can never be conscious with present structure and functioning. Mitja Perus. National Institute of Chemistry and Society for Cognitive Science, Ljubljana, Slovenia. I consider the interminable discussions of whether we are zombies, or whether machines that duplicate every neuron in our brains would be conscious, as veritable Gordian knots of confused thinking. The absurdities are rampant. Take one extreme of the arguments: If we are all zombies, why are we so obsessed with the immense complexities of what we are not? On the other extreme, if it is so logically plausible that our mental apparatus can be 'duped' simply by slavishly replacing every neural circuit in our bodies with an 'equivalent' silicon chip, then why is it so hard to imagine those same neurons as producing the qualia of consciousness? Daniel Dennett stated one of the more sensible criteria for this field when he noted that "we are the paradigmatic conscious creatures." I would add that "our brains are the paradigmatic medium of consciousness," not the machines we have become so enamored of. Intelligent machines are essential tools in cognitive science, but "our discussions . . .run the risk of being hopelessly confused" where their 'machinations' take primacy over the phenomenal contents of the minds of which we have actual knowledge. James Newman. Psychology department, Colorado Neurological Institute, Englewood, USA. |
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