Really dull animals cannot learn by mistake, instead their species learn by mistake through eveloution - sort of.

Somewhat smarter beings learn by mistake ie after doing something one or more times that results in negative sensory data they tend to do it less. Bacteria can according to some researchers learn by mistake.

Smart beings can hypothize ie they can test a problem mentally before trying it out in the real. This saves them from doing some bad things altogether. Apes, humans and perhaps dolphin can all do this to some extent.

None of the above can be classified as consciousness.
IMHO I think the concept of consciousness will prove meaningless in a scientific context just as God has.

// Backman

quote: Original post by Bucko
IMHO I think the concept of consciousness will prove meaningless in a scientific context just as God has.

That''s exactly my point of view. As we advance in our quest for building machines with sophisticated behaviour, I bet we will realize that the question of wether something is conscious or not just doesn''t make much sense.

The same goes to intelligence, to some extent. The situation is a little bit more hopeful with intelligence, because there is the relatively uncontroversial definition of it as "ability to solve problems". Given a set problems, you can quantify how capable of solving them a machine is. Even if those tests are far from perfect, we don''t have an equivalent for testing consciousness.

To phrase it differently, the problem with a definition of intelligence is that the concept maps poorly to something that exists (the ability to solve problems). The problem with a definition of consciousness is that the concept doesn''t even map to anything in reality.

"IMHO I think the concept of consciousness will prove meaningless in a scientific context just as God has."


I disagree.

As Albert Einstein said " I want to know God''s
thoughts...the rest are details". The concept of ''God'' is an inspiration to physics, as consciousness is an inspiration to AI. True, we may never acheive such pie-in-the-sky dreams, but we still need to dream.

I think consciousness has nothing to do with intelligence in a practical sense. As someone else said: intelligence is about solving problems.

Consciousness is something entirely different. There is no way to prove a rock or block of ice is not conscious of its surroundings. Lack of reaction does not indicate lack of consciousness. I can sit and refuse to move or solve any type of problems until I die of starvation if I so choose, but that hardly makes me non-sentient(stupid maybe...but still conscious). The rock may simply not wish to react.

My honest opinion is that consciousness will occur spontaneously in any sufficiently sophisticated system. A rock is not conscious simply because it lacks the physical complexity to become so. A machine, a program, or even entire galaxies may be conscious. Just because they (possibly) lack the means to demonstrate it does not it is not there. Note: I'm not saying galaxies are alive in any sense that we would classify as alive...in fact I think consciousness has little to do with life as we define it. Is a virus conscious? A batcteria? Algae? A frog? A dog? A person? I don't see consciousness as an on/off state, but rather a spectrum ranging from inert (rocks, etc.) to fully aware (humans...or beyond?) Who's to say that what we experience as consciousness is any more definitive than something that may be as far beyond ours as we are beyond bacteria (Reminder: I'm not talking about intelligence here, but rather awareness). I suppose this would make Stonicus' air conditioner slightly conscious.

[rant]
I think philosophers spend so much time playing with definitions and semantics because they lack any real knowledge of the subjects they discuss.
[/rant]


[edited by - SpaceRogue on June 18, 2003 10:11:10 PM]