Nikolaus, On Fri, May 29, 2026 at 2:45 AM H. Nikolaus Schaller <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Am 29.05.2026 um 06:45 schrieb Gregory Casamento <[email protected] > >: > > I haven’t settled on a subject for my dissertation yet. One I am > considering is the nature of consciousness. The idea is that consciousness > could be an emergent property in complex systems. > > > Having done my PhD in the field of AI in the 90ies, I remember this topic. > It was always part of discussions. It is searching for the holy grail and > more a philosophical topic than computer science :) > Well, as we found out with certain things that are emergent properties of LLMs (Multi-stage reasoning being one thing) I am thinking that consciousness might be similar. I also have a minor in psychology. So this has been something on my mind for a long time. I'm aware of how lofty it is. :) > My personal view on consciousness is that the key is to be able to > remember something and compare. Subconscious experiences are suddenly > surfacing and from that moment on you can remember them. And if you loose > consciousness you don't remember. So IMHO consciousness and the ability to > remember is tightly connected. > Agreed. In technological terms: a Flip-Flop has the potential of 1 bit of > consciousness. An AND gate hasn't. > I like this analogy. But as said it is the holy grail and almost everyone like Leibnitz, Turing, > Wiener, Dreyfus, Weizenbaum, Minsky, Popper and many more (e.g. Susan > Blackmore) have reasoned about that but there is no conclusive answer. > > So if you ask 10 people what consciousness is you will get 20 answers :) > Adding another one is therefore an interesting topic. > > But it is far away from GNUstep... Almost the opposite side of the > universe. > Yes, indeed. > BR, > Nikolaus > Yours, GC -- Gregory Casamento GNUstep Lead Developer / Black Lotus, Principal Consultant http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com https://www.openhub.net/languages/objective_c
