Re: Souls and divine sparks

Tim Tyler <seemysig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Curt Welch wrote:
casey <jgkjcasey@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 20, 9:57=A0am, c...@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) wrote:

The Big Dog robot that was posted here is a video of a conscious
machine. It doesn't have the same level of consciousness humans have,
but it's conscious in every sense that humans and animals are
conscious. But yet, most people in this group I reject that
statement, and I suspect a large number of people in AI would either
reject the statement, or at minimal, refuse to commit to a position
on the grounds that not enough was known yet.
Because they don't believe, unlike you, that consciousness is a
substance!
Some magic sauce. They see it as a description of a behavior and big
dog doesn't seem to manifest such behaviors.

What is this "doesn't seem to" BS? Either it does or it doesn't. If
you can't define what behavior it is you are talking about, then you
aren't talking about something real. You are talking about an
undefined magical divine spark which you believe exists in humans.
Either Big does has the behavior or doesn't. If you can define what
your definition of conscious behavior is, I'm sure we can very quickly
out if Big Dog has it.

The "boolean" definition of consciousness.

There's also the sliding scale of consciousness - that gives
some measure of how much awareness an agent has of their
environment, themselves and the relationship between them.

I'm sure the Big Dog robot has a good level of awareness about
where its feet are and whether they are on solid ground, while
it might have a low awareness of whether it is banging its
"head" against a brick wall.

That means it might give out some mixed signals about its
level of conscious awareness.

There is an analogy is with the sleepwalker. The sleepwalker
must be perceiving and reacting to their environment - or they
would fall over - but we do not regard them as being conscious.

Yes, I see consciousness as nothing more than an informal sliding scale of
the complexity of the agents ability to react to its environment. A rock
is near the bottom of it scale and humans are near the top and everything
else fits roughly somewhere in middle.

Human consciousness to me is nothing more than a very advanced and complex
set of reactions (including the ability to constantly adjust reactions
through learning).

Big Dog might very well be near to the level of a sleep walking human in
their consciousness. But that's really giving it more credit than it
deserves since I'm sure it's sensory systems and walking reactions are far
less advanced than even a sleep walking human. But it's a lot more
conscious than a rock! :)

Once we get the robot acting like a human, most people will very much start
to see it as being conscious like a human. There will be hold outs who will
never believe, but I don't think people could spend much time with these
robots and not learn to see them as being just as conscious as humans. I
think the increasingly life-like behaviors in robots like Big Dog should
help some people understand that seeing the right behavior from the machine
is all we are going to need to start believing it's conscious like humans
are conscious.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/
.

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