From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!hou5f!ariel!vax135!cornell!prins Newsgroups: net.ai Title: No people or robots for Camus Article-I.D.: cornell.3965 Posted: Wed Feb 2 12:50:51 1983 Received: Sun Feb 6 10:12:02 1983 Prem Devanbu has appealed to the essentially private nature of consciousness to defend his notion that consciousness can not be created within a machine. I think the crux of the argument is that consciousness is unverifiable since it is purely subjective. The inability to prove the presence of consciousness does not preclude its existence. Every few seconds, by some accounts, a proto-conscious being is evicted from a womb somewhere. These little toddlers grow up to be all too conscious brats. Or so we suspect, since we can't be sure. If Prem is willing to attribute consciousness to his friends (or perhaps only some of them), then why not a machine? How did his friends get so endowed, consciousness being non-communicable and all that? An argument on the non-feasibility of machine consciousness must hinge on fundamental differences between humans and machines, not on our inability to recognize consciousness. But perhaps Prem is a purist. Since no person or thing can be proven to be conscious, none of them are. Then Prem, the only "I", somehow saw fit to engage in a discussion barring consciousness from machines. Who was he trying to convince? Just a bunch of machines without consciousness, plodding through netnews. /jan prins {vax135,decvax,ihnss}!cornell!prins [uucp] prins@cornell [ARPA]