Can we make computers conscious? Maybe. When I was studying at the Arizona State University many years ago I wrote a paper to a question that was the final exam in a psychology class. It was an advanced class and I was admitted to that psychology class because I was a philosophy student studying philosophy of the mind. The test was in class on Friday and the following Monday (the last day of class) the professor would return our papers and give us our grades. I dont remember the professors name but he was some sort of an expert from Europe on a teacher exchange program, I think. When the class came to order on Monday, the professor called my name and when I stood up, he said my paper was a great revelation in understanding the human mind and he had prepared a special award for me and gave me a paper he had prepared over the weekend saying my idea was original and some other sort of praise. It was sort of embarrassing as there were about 30 students in the class. I cant remember the exact wording of my paper but I think I still may have it, and the award, somewhere in my old piles of mementoes stored away somewhere. Anyhow here is the basic ideas of the paper updated to include computers, and I dont know if anyone else has ever independently proposed this theory. (My overview here is not in the original academic form that I had to use on the exam, but you will get the jest of the idea and it might amuse you or you might have some comments - I would be interested in hearing what others think today. ==================== What is consciousness? Consciousness is the physical feeling of something. Consciousness in humans, and all animals, is felt in the same way that you feel things with your hands, taste buds, genitals, etc. Pain, pleasure sensations, even things we attribute to emotions, or thoughts is a form of feeling things. Every awareness a human has is a felt sensation. (and only a felt sensation - there is no other way of humans being aware of things, (including themselves), other than they feel. Seeing is a form or feeling. Hearing sounds is a form of feeling; They are feeling at the most basic level based on exactly the way you feel something when you bump into it. Feeling something is not the same thing as a mechanical device receiving a signal. Humans do receive signals but then they feel the signal as they receive it. A radio may pass on a signal from a transmitter to its speaker, but the radio does not feel anything. At present a computer acts like a radio. Unless a computer is made to feel things (not just be able to give a signal when it detects things) in the same way as animals feel the things they detect, then a computer can never be conscious in the way that a human can. On the other hand, if we can build computers that first can feel things, then we may be able to make computers that are as alive and conscious as humans are. How did we get this way? All existing animals today evolved from single cell animals, of from assembled matter that would become a single cell animal. The first thing that initial, very simple, organism did was feel things. When it bumped against something it either moved away or it ate the thing it touched. Those organisms that learned to avoid predators and eat victims they touched were the ones that passed their traits on to their offspring. As more senses were developed in early organisms, they were all based on touching. Now, as advanced human beings, we still feel things and, we see things, we taste things, we are conscious, and we know things. All these advances are based on the original ability of an organism to feel the presence of something else, which was then improved on by the mechanism of survival of the fittest. The most complicated form of feeling something is when we are conscious of our own internal thinking. This is merely one part of the brain creating a thought, which is just assembling electricity and chemicals that are felt in another piece of the brain. David Pizer
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 19:31:52 +0000
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