Comment by Jtarii
14 hours ago
>The onus is on those making extraordinary claims (that a computer program is conscious) to provide evidence for it.
By saying that a computer program is not conscious you are also making an extraordinary claim. You would have to hold an agnostic position until there is a test for consciousness.
You are relying on intuitive obviousness and rhetoric to make the opposing side look ridiculous "how could a TOASTER be conscious, preposterous!", you aren't making a actual positive argument for your view.
Let's say I insist that rocks are conscious and I ask you to disprove that. How would you go about doing that? It's a genuine question.
I assume that we both think rocks are not conscious, but I'm genuinely unsure of how one could prove this.
I would agree that a rock is not sentient, but determining whether or not it is conscious would require a definition of consciousness and a machine that could test for it.