Comment by david-gpu
6 days ago
> At some point, we'll have AGI that pass any test we can think of and we'll still have people arguing that these cannot be conscious.
Is there a distinction in your mind between consciousness and intelligence? Is it possible, for example, for a machine to solve complex problems but not be conscious? Or vice versa, can an animal or a person be very unintelligent yet still conscious?
A philosophical zombie [1] is essentially a mobile, autonomous human body devoid of consciousness. Critically, still giving all of the external cues that it has in fact consciousness. It is supposed to prove that physicalism doesn't work. "The sense of consciousness" is used like a "soul, with extra steps".
In my humble opinion, which I have no way to prove or disprove, consciousness ("as a soul with extra steps") does not exist, and we are all philosophical zombies. Consciousness "as an amalgamation of complex biological signals and neural interactions that has evolved through millions of years as a successful survival strategy" does exist, and that is all that is needed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
I know I'm not a philosophical zombie based on
>For example, if a philosophical zombie were poked with a sharp object, it would not feel any pain, but it would react exactly the way any conscious human would.
in the Wikipedia article because I don't get on well with the sharp poking. On the basis of Occam's razor I assume all other humans and higher animals are similar. It would be odd if evolution had made me different from all the others.
I am not denying the fact that you feel pain.
What I am denying is that there's anything metaphysical about the whole process.
The opponents of physicalism like Chalmers start from the axiom that consciousness is, in fact, separated from the physical world. Then they use the zombie to "demonstrate" (using circular logic, in my opinion) that physicalism is not possible.
I do believe that your (our) feelings, emotions, and our sense of self all emanate from the physical world. So in that sense "we are all the zombies that Chalmers talks about".
2 replies →
Serves me well for answering a comment before reading the article. This is basically what the author says, even pointing to the Philosophical zombie and all. Shame on me.
The question is mainly interesting in the context of our own behavior and interactions. Because would we treat our food differently if we decided e.g. pigs were intelligent and conscious? I had some salami on my pizza yesterday. But I also believe pigs are intelligent and conscious. And they are close relatives of us genetically. Some people choose to not eat meat for this reason.
I'm of the school of thought that we are all biological computers with emergent properties like intelligence, consciousness, etc. that we might eventually succeed in replicating. Maybe at a more modest level at first. From a practical point of view, I'm more interested in intelligent agents than conscious ones. I mainly need them to do useful things for me. Too much consciousness is a double edged sword. Because then I would have to consider how my agent feels about all this. But can you really have one without the other? I don't have a good answer to this.
People have a tendency to anthropomorphize everything around them. Definitely their pets, plants, and in some cases even inanimate objects. Which doesn't help the debate because it's already happening with LLM tools. Even though they are probably still on the definitely not conscious side of the fence even when they demonstrate mildly intelligent reasoning occasionally.
At some point, people will have a hard time telling the difference with AGI. Is it all smoke and mirrors at that point or are they dealing with an intelligent/conscious thing? That's no doubt going to entertain philosophers for centuries to come. But from a practical point of view, does it really matter at that point? If we can't reliably tell the difference, is there still a difference?