[roenxi]

Adding a few sentences to this point; the mechanism for this "AI system that passes the Turing test" likely to involve neural networks.

So we'd be dealing with a situation where we have something that is behaving in a human like manner using mechanisms that are (to a first approximation) how humans do it.

Claiming that that program isn't conscious is close to defending the idea that the sun orbits the earth - the argument is 'even though we have accurate measurement everything and a well verified model, the implications are discomforting; hence the model must be wrong'.

There are people who won't handle the idea that consciousness is rooted in physical processes that we already have a handle on.

[wildmusings]

Consciousness as it’s being discussed is not intelligence or even the ability to reason about one’s own existence. Is both less and more than those things, really just different altogether. It is subjective experience itself, the inner world somehow projected for you by your mind. It is the experience of seeing and hearing, the feeling of an emotion.

[state_less]

This subjective experience is subject to causation. If a doctor stimulates a certain area of the brain, laughter, smiles or cries might occur. If an anesthetic is taken, this could cause consciousness to cease for some time. So we have this connection between the external world and the subjective. I'm curious though, if you stimulated the laughing part of the brain when someone is anesthetized, would they still laugh, even if they aren't conscious? Is consciousness necessary for certain acts?

[KingMob]

Well, laughing is behavior, and I'm sure there are secondary motor cortices that could force that when stimulated.

But what you're really asking is, would we experience mirth or humor if stimulated. And we know that's true, at least for memories. Certain hippocampal stimulations elicit associated memories.

The problem is not whether biology is related to consciousness (it is), but how?

[state_less]

If the explanation for how it works is something along the lines of, a electrochemical wave passing through a network under x conditions. Will people be okay with it? If you have the whole thing on video, so to speak, where you can see the whole mirthful experience unfold, and can recreate it elsewhere, will that be enough? I guess I'm asking what the standard is for explaining how consciousness arises?

[stcredzero]

If we made a machine with the capacity for simulating intelligence, the ability to reason about one's own existence, and furthermore, gave it the ability to simulate a belief in its experience of seeing and hearing and feeling emotion and a survival instinct, would it be ethical to destroy such a machine? At that point, wouldn't it protest its own sentience, consciousness, and desire to live as convincingly as a human?

[wildmusings]

That’s really a separate question. We really can’t be sure that other people are conscious at all either. Consciousness may have behavioral consequences, but it’s not clear that it is necessary for those behaviors. Perhaps those behaviors can come about some other way.

Our ability to talk about consciousness doesn’t prove much either, because it turns out we can’t explain the idea in words. Trying to explain consciousness comes down to statements like: it’s the difference between seeing and !!!seeing!!! We can only communicate its true nature by way of alluding to the other’s experience of the same, not by direct explanation.

I don’t think it’s helpful to being morality into it. Depending on your moral views, there might be good reason to treat things that we think are conscious as if they are conscious. That’s arguably what we do with other people. It doesn’t speak to the underlying questions though.

[c22]

If, as you surmise, we're discussing a concept which cannot be articulated and which has no moral consequence then what underlying questions remain and what use should we find in answering them? It strikes me as similar to logical paradoxes--a fuzzy ambiguity more likely reflective of limitations in our languages and our particular models of reasoning than of any underlying physical truth.

[wildmusings]

Consciousness is real because we experience it. If anything, the existence of our own subjective experience is the only thing we can be sure of. Usefulness has no bearing on it.

While I’m suggesting above that conscious experience itself is probably irreducible and uncommunicable, that doesn’t mean that we can’t understand its causes and effects. It seems highly plausible that consciousness plays some functional role in the human brain, the understanding of which could be useful for medicine and AI.

Finally, I find plenty of utility in the joy and wonder of trying to understand this universe. The existence of consciousness as one kind of phenomenon or another has profound implications for our understanding of it, disproving some hypotheses and suggesting new ones.

[stcredzero]

Consciousness is real because we experience it.

Is illusion real because we experience it?

It seems highly plausible that consciousness plays some functional role in the human brain, the understanding of which could be useful for medicine and AI.

Evolution produces things which aren't "useful" all the time. Examples: That dimple above your upper lip. The blind spot. The human coccyx...

The existence of consciousness as one kind of phenomenon or another has profound implications for our understanding of it, disproving some hypotheses and suggesting new ones.

[citation needed]