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by garmaine 2425 days ago
It depends on what you mean. We understand that it is a mechanical, computational process. As opposed to, say, the reigning theory of mind in philosophical circles which is dualist. (Spiritualism in academia in the 21st century... sigh.)

We have not yet mapped out the wiring diagrams of our brains which result in the human experience of consciousness. But that's a technological limitation in brain scanning and simulation. We also haven't yet created AI machines that exhibit what we would call consciousness, but we have good ideas of how to do so and are making progress. In both cases we know there is no need to invoke dualist answers, whether it be souls, ghosts in the machine, or 'qualia.'
2 comments
Others 2425 days ago
It is qualitatively untrue to say that most academic philosophers are dualists.

https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl

(Also modern dualism is much better than spiritualism! There are some good reasons why people believe it.)

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YeGoblynQueenne 2424 days ago
>> We also haven't yet created AI machines that exhibit what we would call consciousness, but we have good ideas of how to do so and are making progress.

That's news to me. What do you mean? What are those good ideas that we have and that we are making progress towards, that will lead us to conscious machines?

Actually: conscious software. Presumably, if we can get to strong AI from where we are right now, then we already have the hardware and we just need to figure out how to write the software?

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