I would find this more persuasive if it had thorough references to the existing science of consciousness. I was under the impression that we still don’t know what the necessary conditions for consciousness are, and there are many competing theories on the topic. Stating that one theory is correct doesn’t answer that key question for me.
I was under the impression that we still don’t know what the necessary conditions for consciousness are
We definitely don’t, and I hope I haven’t committed myself to any one theory. The point is that the most developed views provide few obstacles. Those views tend to highlight different facets of human cognitive architecture. For instance, it may be some form of self-representation that matters, or the accessibility of representations to various cognitive modules. I didn’t stress this enough: of the many views, we may not know which is right, but it wouldn’t be technically hard to satisfy them all. After all, human cognitive architecture satisfies every plausible criterion of consciousness.
On the other hand, it is controversial whether any of the developed views are remotely right. There are some people who think we’ve gone in the wrong direction. However, these people generally don’t have specific alternative proposals that clearly come down one way or another on AI systems.
I would find this more persuasive if it had thorough references to the existing science of consciousness. I was under the impression that we still don’t know what the necessary conditions for consciousness are, and there are many competing theories on the topic. Stating that one theory is correct doesn’t answer that key question for me.
We definitely don’t, and I hope I haven’t committed myself to any one theory. The point is that the most developed views provide few obstacles. Those views tend to highlight different facets of human cognitive architecture. For instance, it may be some form of self-representation that matters, or the accessibility of representations to various cognitive modules. I didn’t stress this enough: of the many views, we may not know which is right, but it wouldn’t be technically hard to satisfy them all. After all, human cognitive architecture satisfies every plausible criterion of consciousness.
On the other hand, it is controversial whether any of the developed views are remotely right. There are some people who think we’ve gone in the wrong direction. However, these people generally don’t have specific alternative proposals that clearly come down one way or another on AI systems.