On 10/22/07, Matt Mahoney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Evolution favors animals with good learning algorithms. In humans we > associate these properties with consciousness and free will. These beliefs > are instinctive. You cannot reason logically about them. In particular, you > cannot ask if a machine or animal or another person is conscious. (Does > it really feel pain, or only respond to pain?) You can only ask about its > behavior.
Currently we can't really tell a conscious entity from one that is just very good at mimicking the behaviour of conscious entities, but I think it is wrong to assume that we will *never* be able to tell these things apart. It's conceivable that consciousness will one day be a very thoroughly understood physical phenomenon, and that it will be trivial to tell whether a system is conscious or not. -- Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&id_secret=56349246-eb8644
