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Following Thomas Nagel, I understand 'x is conscious' to mean roughly 'there is something that it is like to be x'. In this sense, a system can be intelligent without being conscious. Consciousness, intelligence, and self-awareness might all be orthogonal. We currently know vastly more about how to build an intelligent machine (extremely low as the level of intelligence may be) than about how to build a conscious machine (we know nothing at all about that). Imagine waking up from deep sleep. In the first few seconds, there is virtually no intelligence present other than basic autonomous body survival intelligence, which is also present during deep sleep. So what has changed? What is the difference between being in deep sleep and being in the state of unintelligent awareness a second after waking from deep sleep? There is not something that it is like to be in deep sleep. There is something that it is like to be just awakened from deep sleep. There is a lot of confusion in most conversations between consciousness, intelligence, and self-awareness. The three are different concepts and the relationships between them are poorly understod. I can imagine a human-level intelligence that lacks consciousness (this is sort of what is meant by the term 'p-zombie'). I can imagine a being that almost or completely lacks intelligence (in the sense of problem-solving ability, pattern recognition, etc.), yet is conscious. Humanity currently has a lot of knowledge about how various material phenomena (drugs, being hit in the head with a brick, etc.) affect consciousness, but as far as I know humanity currently has zero knowledge about the mechanisms by which material phenomena affect consciousness. Consciousness in its essence is not understood at all and may be fundamentally beyond the reach of science. There is no reason to assume that it is in principle possible to objectively evaluate whether some entity is conscious. |
Maybe, but probably not!
> I can imagine a human-level intelligence that lacks consciousness (this is sort of what is meant by the term 'p-zombie'). I can imagine a being that almost or completely lacks intelligence (in the sense of problem-solving ability, pattern recognition, etc.), yet is conscious.
I can imagine living forever, but it's actually impossible. The p-zombie argument depends upon a rhetorical trick that exposes our ignorance, much like Zeno's paradox.
> There is no reason to assume that it is in principle possible to objectively evaluate whether some entity is conscious.
Whatever argument you might use to to justify this, would also suggest that it is not possible in principle to objectively evaluate whether something is healthy, or alive or feels pain. And yet we seem quite adept at this.