You use consciousness in different ways, seemingly without noticing the
difference. I think there are at least three different levels of
consciousness and they have different relations to intelligence.
Consciousness1 is to have have sensors that provide awareness of the
environment and of pain. Intelligence processes this small amount of
information with addition of a little memory of sensations. Amoebas,
spiders, fish... have this kind of consciousness. Consciousness2 is
sensors plus memory plus processing to make predictions, i.e. learning.
This corresponds to the intelligence you dog has. Consciousness3 is
Conscious2 plus reflexive imagination in which you can think of yourself
and others acting and thinking in different scenarios. This is
intelligence that can plan ahead, practice deception, and invent language.
On 11/28/2025 4:11 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, Nov 27, 2025 at 10:15 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]>
wrote:
/>>> and you were asked about your consciousness you'd
find what you'd read about consciousness and use it to reply./
//
*>>So would a human being, although a human's knowledge base
would be far far smaller.*
>///Smaller, but also including direct knowledge of consciousness./
*I have direct knowledge ofmy own consciousness but not of yours*
Which was my point. You know something about consciousness that the
knowledge base of an LLM doesn't contain.
The rest of your response about solipism is irrelevant. You take it as
an axiom that intelligent behavior implies consciousness, yet at the
same time you recognize that consciousness is "easier" than
intelligence. So you're now assuming a starfish moving toward food
isn't intelligent but may be conscious. Well a starfish will react to a
touch.
/>>> And who wrote that stuff about consciousness...people who
were conscious./
*>> You take that as a given, but why? *
The point is that it was not written by an AI, which is a historical
fact. Again your reply is off the point.
*Because it took intelligence to write that stuff about
consciousness and you implicitly assume that intelligence implies
consciousness. *
/> No, you assume that. But you wouldn't if you reflected on how
the LLM seems intelligent/
*You assumed the people that wrote those books about consciousness
were themselves conscious, but why did you make that assumption? *
No, I only assumed they weren't LLMs, therefore what the LLM said was
entirely derivative.
/> In part I believe my fellow human beings are conscious because
the are physically like me and I'm conscious. /
*Physically likeyou? *
Yes. Capable of movement, speech, directed action. Under anesthesia my
fellow human being is not conscious.*
*
/> You seem to think intelligence is the end all and be all of
consciousness. /
*I do.If it were otherwise, if consciousness wasn't an inevitable
byproduct of intelligence *
But you make the inference the other way. You assume intelligence
implies consciousness, which is what I'm denying of LLM's.
/> I think my dog is conscious, even though he's not very
intelligent./
*You're never going to be able to teach General Relativity to your
dog, but your dog is a lot more intelligent than a rock, and
correspondingly is a lot more consciousthan a rock.*
But the correspondence is not that his intelligence made him conscious.
Evolutionarily it's the other way around; sensors develop and drove
reaction. Intelligence inserted something more complicated than "drove".
*> What exactlywould an AI needto say*
There are more possible actions than "say".
*for you to think there were indications of
self-consciousness? Do you see any indications of
self-consciousness in this email that I have written? **Do you
see any indications that I am not an AI?*
You keep using "AI" instead of LLM. That's not what an LLM would do to
try to shift the argument.
/> I'd like it to tell me where it was located,/
*Asking where consciousness is located islike asking where the integer
4 is located. I don't believe your consciousness is inside a container
made of bonefor the simple reason that you are not conscious of it
being there. When you're repairing a watch with your handswhere is
your consciousness? The least bad answer would be at the tip of your
fingers. When your brain and body is in Seattle and you're watching a
football game on TV from Atlanta but you're thinking about the Great
Wall Of China, where is your consciousness? The least bad answer
would be China.*
You lose consciousness when you're hit in the head, not on the tip of
your finger.
Brent
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