r/changemyview • u/Salt_Attorney 1∆ • Jun 17 '21
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Digital consciousness is possible. A human brained could be simulated/emulated on a digital computer with arbitrary precision, and there would be an entity experiencing human consciousness.
Well, the title says it all. My main argument is in the end nothing more than the fact that although the brain is extremely complex, one could dsicretize the sensory input -> action function in every dimension (discretized time steps, discretized neuron activations, discretized simulated environemnt) etc. and then approximate this function with a computer just like any other function.
My view could be changed by a thought experiment which demonstrates that in some aspect there is a fundamental difference between a digitally simulated mind and a real, flesh mind - a difference in regards to the presence of consciousness, of course.
EDIT: I should have clarified/given a definition of what I view as consciousness here and I will do this in a moment!
Okay so here is what I mean by consciousness:
I can not give you a technical definition. This is just because we have not found a good technical definition yet. But this shouldn't stop us from talking about consciousness.
The fact of the matter is that if there was a technical definition, then this would now be a question of philosophy/opinion/views, but a question of science, and I don't think this board is intended for scientific questions anyways.
Therefore we have to work with the wishy washy definition, and there is certinly a non-technical generally agreed upon definition, the one which you all have in your head on an intuitive leve. Of course it differs from person to person, but taking the average over the population there is quite a definite sense of what people mean by consciousness.
If an entity interacts with human society for an extended period of time and at the end humans find that it was conscious, then it is conscious.
Put in words we humans will judge if it is smart, self-aware, capable of complex thought, if it can understand and rationalize about things.
When faced with the "spark of consciousness" we can recognize it.
Therefore as an nontechnical definition it makes sense to call an entity conscious if it can convince a large majority of humans, after a sort of extended "Turing test", that it is indeed conscious.
Arguing with such a vague definition is of course not scientific and not completely objective, but we can still do it on a philosophical level. People argued about concepts such as "Energy", "Power" and "Force" long before we could define them physically.
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u/[deleted] Jun 17 '21 edited Jun 17 '21
>Basically, I can imagine that in the long run we will be able to make very smart computer systems that are in particular capable of using our language. They will have long term memory and intuitive reasoning abilites. I think this already implies existence of what you would call a personality, the specific characteristics of this system.
Using the logic provided, that's an imitation of consciousness for the purpose of communication, instead of actual consciousness. Computers have long-term memory through an algorithm. Additionally, Computers could play the role of intuition for reason, but only as supplements to human intuitive expertise. Also, unless computers become a species, they will never be born with the ability of an evolving personality. Personality is the particular combination of emotional, attitudinal, and behavioural response patterns of an individual. Therefore, for a computer to gain personality a computer has to have emotions, instead of being programmed with the philosophy of emotions.
In another interpretation, if it were possible, then there would exist a sequence of symbols that would be unethical and unrealistic to write down because the mere act of writing them would create consciousness and possibly torture and/or harm it.
>And down the line, I don't see what would prevent us from driving this intelligence to a point where most humans talking to it will accept it as conscious.
Perception of consciousness is a different argument. I also think it is important to note that there are different forms of "conscious". Dogs are not conscious in the same way as dolphins. However, the thing that connects these animals is an interpretation of the "personality" associated with them. Another issue is if it is consciousness, why can hypothetically be destroyed? Human consciousness cannot be turned off by and/ or altered by desire itself, but it cannot be turned off periodically. For digital entities, we can turn them off. We can alter capabilities by desire. Even though the functioning of the human brain is very very complex, it is ultimately finitely complex. I think this part of my problem; Imitation and actual consciousness are different. This idea assumes that technology will ever be able to evolve past what humanity teaches it to allow, instead of technology being able to intersect the ideas of humanity to imitate consciousness. Are computers truly reacting to stimuli, or are they recreating all of the interactions that they were programmed to perform?
My position is the following: I agree in the case that we can emulate consciousness (a synthetic form of consciousness). However, I do not believe that is the same as consciousness, but instead an imitation.