Consciousness is something that everybody knows what is it but it cannot really be explained. Different beings around the world are conscious in their own particular ways, but we all have a characteristic in common. We are living, breathing and living beings. But what if consciousness could exist in artificial beings that go about their day with artificial intelligence, otherwise known as A.I? Personally, I do not believe this is possible because even though we could eventually look the same, the A.I will never be conscious. I believe that it could mimic consciousness, but given the chance, the A.I would demonstrate that it does not have real consciousness at all.
Dennett and Bringsjord are two philosophers that could not disagree more when
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According to Dennett, humans are composed of atoms and even though it is very complex, he believed that technology could be advanced enough to replicate a human being through silicone, chips and wires. He states, “might a conscious robot be “just” a stupendous assembly of more elementary artifacts—silicon chips, wires, tiny motors and cameras—or would any such assembly, of whatever size and sophistication, have to leave out some special ingredient that is requisite for consciousness?” We do not exactly know what consciousness is; we just know that it is there. As the famous quote from Rene Descartes goes, “I think, therefore I am”. But can an A.I think? This is a valid question that may get a different answer depending on who you ask. Personally, I do not believe that an A.I can think. It does process information, but I would not call that “thinking”. Take Siri, for example. Siri is able to talk to us and find information that we request, but can Siri actually think? No! It is just a program that was made to do that. Another way to look at this is through the example of the reading we did of the Chinese Room. A man has a giant book of every available phrase or sentence in Chinese. When an outsider requests a translation, the man …show more content…
One day, technology might be advanced enough to be able to mimic consciousness but and A.I will never be able to have actual consciousness. They would could be wired to be able to pretend very well that they have consciousness but would not have actual consciousness. Bringsjord refers to this as a “philosophical zombie”. Essentially, it would be a person that looks exactly like us and to a certain extent, acts like us, but given the right circumstances you would notice that this being acts with no emotion. It would not have a set of memories, beliefs and desires. Locke establishes that a person is categorizes by “a collection of memories, beliefs and desires”. How could a robot that was created by a human being have that? So essentially, since the A.I would not have a collection of these characteristics then therefore you could argue that it lacks consciousness. It would just be a being that goes through the daily motions of life without questioning its existence or its purpose in life. Bringsjord says, “what sort of artifacts will these creatures be? I offer an unflattering one-word response: Pollock, Dennett, and like-minded researchers are busy building… zombies.”
Andy Clark strongly argues for the theory that computers have the potential for being intelligent beings in his work “Mindware: Meat Machines.” The support Clark uses to defend his claims states the similar comparison of humans and machines using an array of symbols to perform functions. The main argument of his work can be interpreted as follows:
Computers are well known for their ability to perform computations and follow a list of instructions, but can a computer be a mind? There are varying philosophical theories on what constitutes a mind. Some believe that the mind must be a physical object, and others believe in dualism, or the idea that the mind is separate from the brain. I am a firm believer in dualism, and this is part of the argument that I will use in the favor of Dennett. The materialist view however, would likely not consider Hubert to be a mind. That viewpoint believes that all objects are physical objects, so the mind is a physical part of a human brain, and thus this viewpoint doesn’t consider the mind and body as two separate things, but instead they are both parts of one object. The materialist would likely reject Hubert as a mind, even though circuit boards are a physical object, although even a materialist would likely agree that Yorick being separated from Dennett does not disqualify Yorick as a mind. If one adopts a dualism view and accept the idea that the mind does not have to be connected to a physical object, then one can make sense of Hubert being able to act as the mind of Dennett. The story told to us by Dennett, is that when the switch is flipped on his little box attached to his body, the entity that controls Dennett, changes to the other entity. Since the switches are not labeled, it is never known which entity is
How can the brain be a mind, a conscious person? Recently, some philosophers have argued that human consciousness and cognitive activity, including even our moral cognition and behavior, can best be explained using a connectionist or neural network model of the brain (see Churchland 1995; Dennett 1991 and 1996). (1) Is this right? Can a mass of networked neurons produce moral human agents? I shall argue that it can; a brain can be morally excellent. A connectionist account of how the brain works can explain how a person might be morally excellent in Aristotle's sense of that term.
Is Consciousness something automatic, rooted in our selves, something inseparable in a being with abilities of
"Once the first powerful machine, with an intelligence similar to that of a human, is switched on, we will most likely not get the opportunity to switch it back off again. " Although Asimov provided us with 'rules' for robots, this quote embodies the unspoken fear of AI. Once we create a being that cannot be defined as wholly biological or mechanical, how will we determine ...
Nowadays technology allows us to upload all the memory of a dead person on the computer and create a robot. But can we say the robot is a person? Or can we say the person is still alive? The robot indeed has memory, even the personality of this person before he passes on. But robots and human are different, human have flesh and blood, robots, however, are made by metal. Although it is technologically achievable that robots can react respectively toward different feelings such as pain and itch, these reactions are artificial and they are not real “feelings”, metal would not feel the same way as skin feels.
If a machine passes the test, then it is clear that for many ordinary people it would be a sufficient reason to say that that is a thinking machine. And, in fact, since it is able to conversate with a human and to actually fool him and convince him that the machine is human, this would seem t...
For years philosophers have enquired into the nature of the mind, and specifically the mysteries of intelligence and consciousness. (O’Brien 2017) One of these mysteries is how a material object, the brain, can produce thoughts and rational reasoning. The Computational Theory of Mind (CTM) was devised in response to this problem, and suggests that the brain is quite literally a computer, and that thinking is essentially computation. (BOOK) This idea was first theorised by philosopher Hilary Putnam, but was later developed by Jerry Fodor, and continues to be further investigated today as cognitive science, modern computers, and artificial intelligence continue to advance. [REF] Computer processing machines ‘think’ by recognising information
Artificial Intelligence is a term not too widely used in today’s society. With today’s technology we haven’t found a way to enable someone to leave their physical body and let their mind survive within a computer. Could it be possible? Maybe someday, but for now it’s just in theory. The novel by William Gibson, Neuromancer, has touched greatly on the idea of artificial intelligence. He describes it as a world where many things are possible. By simply logging on the computer, it opens up a world we could never comprehend. The possibilities are endless in the world of William Gibson.
"Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness." Encyclopedia of Consciousness. Oxford: Elsevier Science & Technology, 2009. Credo Reference. Web. 26 April 2011.
Well as I said we first must define ‘to think’. What does that mean? Webster’s New Compact Dictionary defines ‘think’ as "1. Have a mind. 2. Believe. 3. Employ the mind.". It defines mind as ‘to think’. So does this mean that if you can think does this mean you have a mind? My opinion is that, according to this definition, computers can think. A computer can give you an answer to the question ‘What is 4x13?’, so it can think. What’s that? You say it’s just programmed to do that, if no one programmed it wouldn’t be able to do that. Well how did you know how to answer the question? Your teacher or parent’s or someone taught it to you. So you were programmed, same as the computer was.
The traditional notion that seeks to compare human minds, with all its intricacies and biochemical functions, to that of artificially programmed digital computers, is self-defeating and it should be discredited in dialogs regarding the theory of artificial intelligence. This traditional notion is akin to comparing, in crude terms, cars and aeroplanes or ice cream and cream cheese. Human mental states are caused by various behaviours of elements in the brain, and these behaviours in are adjudged by the biochemical composition of our brains, which are responsible for our thoughts and functions. When we discuss mental states of systems it is important to distinguish between human brains and that of any natural or artificial organisms which is said to have central processing systems (i.e. brains of chimpanzees, microchips etc.). Although various similarities may exist between those systems in terms of functions and behaviourism, the intrinsic intentionality within those systems differ extensively. Although it may not be possible to prove that whether or not mental states exist at all in systems other than our own, in this paper I will strive to present arguments that a machine that computes and responds to inputs does indeed have a state of mind, but one that does not necessarily result in a form of mentality. This paper will discuss how the states and intentionality of digital computers are different from the states of human brains and yet they are indeed states of a mind resulting from various functions in their central processing systems.
The Turing test was a test introduced by Alan Turing (1912-1954) and it involves having a human in one room and an artificial intelligence, otherwise known as a computer, in another and as well as an observer. Turing himself suggested that as long as the observer is unaware whether it’s a human or a computer in either room the computer should be regarded as having human-level intelligence. (Nunez, 2016). But does the “human-level” intelligence mean it should be considered to be conscious? Is it more important to be clever or to be aware of being clever? Is it moral to create a conscious being that just serves our purposes? Aside from the moral implications there are technical implications and parameters
It should be noted that A.I. does not refer to robots, for the robots are simply a manifestation of A.I. Artificial Intelligence actually refers to the minds of these robots. A.I. is the thinking capacity of machines, and not the machine itself, for the A.I. is infused into the machine.
Referencing back through Who Are You: Consciousness, Identity, and the Self, the English philosopher and physician John Locke ideas about self state what does it mean to be a person and what is consciousness? He felt a person is a thinking, intelligent being who has the ability to reason and to reflect. He also thought consciousness is being aware that we are thinking (Chaffee, 2013). Personally, he was one of the few philosophers that I could agree with in this chapter. The world is full of human beings, with the ability to think, to go about their day and perform the tasks needed to survive, but with one of the questions that arose fairly early in the class, how many people contemplate their existence? How many have the ability to reason and reflect and actually do so? I feel Locke was on the right track in his thinking – we have the ability, but each one of us has failed to ask the right questions and look for deeper answers throughout our life. I have gone through periods in my life where surviving was all I could manage and I look back on those times with regret because, as I si...