On 5/2/2013 2:18 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 3:09 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 5/2/2013 7:47 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
Would anyone here say that a conditional (e.g., "if/else") statement"
(in some
program) is conscious?
I don't think so. We make if/else choices subconsciously all the time. My
introspection tells me that conscious thought is a kind of narrative story I
construct. I think the function of this is to condense my experience for
memory and
future reference when I need to plan or predict based on my past
experience. If I
were designing an intelligent Mars Rover that had to learn to deal with a
wide
variety of problems which I cannot anticipate, this sort of selective memory
narrative would be one component of it's learning.
Of course there are different levels of consciousness. A Mars Rover needs a
conception of "self" as being in certain place, having completed certain
tasks,
having certain capabilities, etc. But it doesn't need to consider its
status among
peers or reflect on its own computational methods or its ultimate end.
Brent
Brent,
I think you may be reading my question in the wrong way. I didn't mean to equate your
consciousness with that of every if/else decision you make, but rather ask something
like, "What does the shortest possible program that is conscious look like?"
I have trouble seeing why some short piece of code like:
if (x > 0) then do y() else do z();
Is not conscious of some property of x (whether it is positive or negative), at least
when the two different functions y() and z() cause the program to enter different states.
I'd be inclined to call that "awareness": My thermostat is aware of the temperature.
Consciousness is at a different level which is distinguished by being able to report on
decisions introspectively. The thermostat can't explain why it switched on the air
conditioning five minutes ago. Sometimes I find myself taking the road to work when I
intended to drive to the supermarket - I can't explain what I was thinking. It was an
unconscious choice.
I find it harder to justify the consciousness of a program that did not do any
selection, distinction, or inspection. In most programming languages, this is done
using a conditional statement, such as an "if statement", a "while statement" or a
"switch statement".
Sure, that's necessary for consciousness, but I think it's less than sufficient.
Brent
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