[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]

[wildmusings]

>Is illusion real because we experience it?

Consciousness is the experiencing.

[stcredzero]

You didn't answer the question. So the consciousness of the illusion is real? One of my girlfriends was a voracious reader, but couldn't for the life of her recall anything out of them. She used to joke that I was "functionally illiterate" because I'd take six months to read something like Kavalier and Klay, but I could remember certain scenes in great detail. Is my ex-girlfriends' experience of her reading books real? Reading gives her great pleasure, so she must experience such pleasure. Her experience seems to be like mine when I recall having a dream where I felt certain emotions, but the contents of the dream fade out of my memory. Is her experience of reading and my experience of dreaming real?

If one deeply introspects about the nature of one's experience of experience, one may come to realize there's a certain fragmentary nature to consciousness.

Have you ever had episodes of behavior, for which you have no memory? "Blackouts?" I have. What if consciousness is simply an interesting epiphenomenon, unnecessary for thought and decision making? If all we have are people's reports of it, why should we accord any more epistemological significance to it than we do to religious experiences?