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