[adyashakti]

of course; consciousness is a biologically inherited trait. that inheritance can't cross the human-machine interface.

[subscribed]

I presume you used "biologically" to emphasise we don't yet know any non-biological consciousnesses, not that you determine, a priori, that the consciousness must be and is always rooted in the wet organic matter?

I don't think you could come up with a good theory for the latter and there's nothing that would preclude the existence of the artificial / inorganic consciousness - after all, correct me if I'm mistaken, we have no idea how the consciousness emerge in some biological entities.

[fat_cantor]

That's what the paper's abstract says:

>Crucially, this argument does not rely on biological exclusivity. If an artificial system were ever conscious, it would be because of its specific physical constitution, never its syntactic architecture.

[subscribed]

Yeah, this is why I wanted to understand what they were saying.

[JPLeRouzic]

> consciousness is a biologically inherited trait

That consciousness is a biologically trait seems a common statement, but why "inherited"?

[deepthaw]

why? i'm not being snarky, i'm trying to figure out what we even consider consciousness to be nowadays and why it'd be limited to biological entities.

[postalrat]

Sure if that's how you define consciousness. What do you want to call the machine version of the same phenomenon?

[pixl97]

"Consciousness is magical and can only do things that I want it to, and none of the things that are uncomfortable to me. Of course I've not defined any of this so I can move the goal posts as needed"