tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post108112350497313305..comments2023-10-29T10:32:36.914-04:00Comments on Philosophy, et cetera: Illusions and ZombiesRichard Y Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1093749122747001242004-08-28T23:12:00.000-04:002004-08-28T23:12:00.000-04:00[Copied from old comments thread]
You have a robo...[Copied from old comments thread]<br /><br />You have a robot that has conscious awareness of sensory events iff we would have qualia in that situation...so why doesn't that robot have qualia? If qualia isn't having a sensation coupled with the awareness of having that sensation, then what could it possibly be? Some weird metaphysical epiphenomenon, I suppose, but I have trouble grasping why that's a live possibility let alone a compelling answer.<br />Joshua Macy | Email | Homepage | 5th Apr 04 - 2:34 pm | #<br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> <br />Hi Joshua, good to hear from ya!<br /><br />I'm afraid I might not have been clear enough in the distinction it is necessary to make between two quite distinct possible meanings of "conscious".<br /><br />1) Sentience / subjective consciousness - this is the mysterious one, the one you're thinking of, where qualia are involved. The robot is NOT conscious in this sense.<br /><br />2) Availability of information - even the most basic computer program can partition its data so that some lower-level info is hidden from the decision-making procedures.<br /><br />I must emphasis that when I spoke of a zombie having "a sort of conscious/sub-conscious division", I was talking about the #2 definition above. This use of the word 'conscious' is really just metaphorical, so I apologise if my use of the term was misleading. <br /><br />If you're interested, Jack Copeland (I think the book's title is "Artifical Intelligence: A philosophical introduction") briefly explores 3 different understandings of "consciousness", of which these are two. <br /><br />Anyway, the central point to note is that any simple robot (as could be built today), could easily have 'hidden' information (e.g. raw visual data) which is not made available to its other decision-procedures.<br /><br />That is, its camera would capture the photons (same as our eyes)... but the interpreting algorithm could be fooled into not noticing any yellow dots (same as our brain).<br /><br />No qualia or "consciousness" (in the #1 sense) necessary.<br />Richard | 5th Apr 04 - 7:50 pm |Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.com