From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!eisx!pd
Newsgroups: net.ai
Title: Defence of the Camus-Robot connection...
Article-I.D.: eisx.500
Posted: Sat Feb  5 12:02:00 1983
Received: Sun Feb  6 04:52:11 1983

I will take the risk of repeating what I had argued. I think I might
have made some observations that are  not strictly relevant to the main
thrust of my arguement. The crucial point is not that 

"One can not prove or disprove that a machine has conciousness".

The crux of the arguement is that conciousness is a non-linguistic,
non mathematical, non dualistic experience. Such being the case, it
is not possible to describe it any way, and hence it is impossible 
to build a machine that has conciousness. 

The main stumbling block that I am identifying is not one of validation,
ie., ensuring that claims of machine conciousness are correct, but rather
one of modus operandi... I can't see how some can go about describing
conciousness, modeling it, developing a mathematical notation, 
a physical design.. etc: steps that are normally involved in
building any kind of machine.

By the way, the only time my friends are not concious is when they are
drunk.

Prem