Comment by tmerr

My read of Turing's paper is that he proposes replacing the question of "Can machines think" with a behavioral test. I doubt he would try to argue that passing the test implies that a machine is conscious, he's saying that harder question is practically not important. Maybe the most relevant thing quote from the paper

> [of consciousness] I do not think these mysteries necessarily need to be solved before we can answer the question with which we are concerned in this paper.

So I feel like Dawkins is kind of strawmanning what Turings argument was, or arguing based on a confused popular understanding of it. There is another answer between "yes it's conscious" and "no it's not" that is "I don't know", or "it's not a meaningful question", that feels like the more honest position right now.

I agree with another commenter here that Dawkins piece is interesting in another sense though. As I'm reading through the conversation with Claude, the response "That is possibly the most precisely formulated question anyone has ever asked about the nature of my existence" jumped out to me as a little sycophantic. Maybe it is easier to believe that a machine is conscious when it is agreeing with you and making you feel closer to it.