> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matt Mahoney [mailto:[email protected]]
> 
> Let's not confuse the 3 meanings of the word "consciousness".
> 1. A mental state of wakefulness.
> 2. A soul or homunculus, an identity separate from the brain but with
> identical behavior, whose belief is reinforced by the sense of qualia:
> the pleasant feeling we associate with storing perceptions and thoughts into
> episodic memory.
> 3. A property of agents that makes it immoral to harm them.
> 

2 and 3 are intersecting sets in many ways. They are deeply intertwined. And 3 
is more than just a property it's perhaps at the root of all immorality.


> With sufficient training data, you could write a program that would input
> poetry and predict how people would feel about it. Then with a small
> modification, the computer could claim to feel the same way.
> 

Yes but - a synthetic (human) consciousness wouldn't just be an accurate copy 
of what people feel. It would have to actually feel it. A computational 
experience of the feeling not a goal of accurate estimation while seeking 
reward for replying pleasurably to the inputter's poetic artistry.

John
 




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