This debate keeps popping up on forums. Though far from proving anything Science Fiction does a better job on
describing AI {artificial intelligence} than any philosophical arguments I have seen. To some of us the robots
and androids that interact with humans do not seem far-fetched and in fact are inevitable.
The question I'm seeing lately seems to revolve around the issue of when is so-called 'consciousness' alive and is it
a sentient being? To that I always come back to one of my favorite philosophical quote:

Cogito ergo sum (French: "Je pense donc je suis"; English: "I think, therefore I am") is a philosophical Latin statement proposed by René Descartes. The simple meaning of the phrase is that someone wondering whether or not he or she exists is, in and of itself, proof that something, an "I", exists to do the thinking.....

A computer of course still lacks an 'I" or self and without an ego it will
not do anything unless so programmed. What I keep asking is it too much to believe that an ego can be programmed
into AI so it can think for itself? Already computers have beat grand-masters at chess. Why can you not see it talking,
thinking, interacting, and even though not like human life, still it would be conscious and in a sense alive?

RedPanda900 wrote:Well we're conscious aren't we? Therefore of course it's possible to create consciousness, you just have to have the right assembly. Whether or not we'll ever create it ourselves, I'm not so sure.

A simple and interesting way to look at it. You see how the more learned philosophers here see it as a complex
argument and then you simplify it with what is obvious. Of course they are talking about creating consciousness
other than the biological humans. Then you have to get into definitions. What is life? What is consciousness?
Is life always conscious by the fact of being alive? You see how complicated the argument can become.
And it may not give a solution that will satisfy anyone until their pet robot is fetching the mail. The point
being this is one of those subjects where having an imagination whether philosophical or even fanciful might
yield the more acceptable conclusion. Turn on an old Star Trek episode and watch Data, the thinking android
and then tell me you do not have the speculative imagination to believe that such
entities will be created and will live and be accepted as a form of life.

-- Updated March 22nd, 2012, 10:58 pm to add the following --

Then again there is another way of looking at the question and the answer. If we view the universe and
all of existence from another point of view we might say that we can not create consciousness because
consciousness is first - all existence is conscious and we are a manifestations of consciousness. From
that point of view all we can do is redefine what is conscious. All that we are creating in that case
is a higher level of awareness of consciousness and by the same token consciousness itself becomes
more aware but nothing is created because it is already there and is only redefined.

Interesting debate; but isn't what we are really talking about is whether we can create self-aware, egotistical
human like {or even animal like} consciousness? Can it walk, talk and interact with us? Can it have a goal which
is more than what was programmed into it?

And for the record, I say yes and I say it is inevitable. It really does not take that much of a stretch of your
imagination to see the computer now sitting in front of you advanced and eventually achieving this.
For the moment it is still Science Fiction but so were submarines and flying airships. I only wish I could
give a better example than Science Fiction as an indication of consciousness creation apart from us
but for now until you see this conscious thinking machine interacting, some will not believe that it is possible.

You see we are just spinning our wheels unless we use an exact definition of what is meant by consciousness.
When Martian Visitor said: "....Here you are redefining the word "awareness" so that it would cover both humans
and the thermostats in their central heating systems." it was an interesting point; that programmed thermostat
reacts to the environment; and I suppose someone could say it is conscious {even though obviously that would be
a very-limited consciousness or awareness}. So the main question before deciding whether we can create
consciousness is to have an exact definition for consciousness then we can talk about whether we can create it.

wanabe wrote:UniversalAlien,

I agree that consciousness needs to be defined. If we are to discuss it in particular. Initially, I was pointing out though there is huge debate over what consciousness is, we can say that living things have it.

Consciousness

stanford.edu wrote:Sentience. It may be conscious in the generic sense of simply being a sentient creature, one capable of sensing and responding to its world (Armstrong 1981). Being conscious in this sense may admit of degrees, and just what sort of sensory capacities are sufficient may not be sharply defined. Are fish conscious in the relevant respect? And what of shrimp or bees?

This sentience is all we need to create in order to create consciousness.

True, if that is the definition. That might be simple to create. A reacting one-cell living organism might then
be considered as conscious. But I believe the original poster who began this thread had something else in mind.

Originally KingKool said:

Is it possible to create a computer world in which the cpu avatars are sentient beings? At the bare minimum you could say we have created autonomous beings that react based on a set of laws. Much like sharks operate based on primal instincts.

If you have never read the book Saga by Conor Kostik, it is about beings in a video game that don;t know they are in a video game. They act independently from the main cpu that knows the world isn't real. In other words, every being is conscious and thinks their world is real. I thought this was an interesting concept and thought I would share it with you.

That said let me try to give a definition of consciousness. This definition will reflect my own personal obsession
with AI {Artificial Intelligence} and with the now debatable issue of whether AI can become sentient and
conscious of itself and environment. For now I will leave the issue of viruses and other forms of life because
if the definition tries to cover too much it is beyond my ability to come up with a sharp enough definition to
be practicable. So I am specifically defining man made machine intelligence created in the lab.

To be conscious the entity so created will posses awareness of the environment. It will have all, or at least
most of human senses including sense of sight and sound. It will be able to process the data picked-up
by its sensory apparatus and have an ability to reason and calculate the meaning of the data received.
It will be able to react to the data. It will have a sense of 'self' allowing it to reach decisions of how to
react to the environment and to the data it picks up. It will have a sense of purpose even though its original
sense of purpose will be programmed - At some point that programmed self will be able to reach a state
of independence allowing for its own will - And at that point it will be considered conscious - the inventor
or creator of it will be able say: I have created consciousness.

Since there still seems to be a question of exactly what we are talking about as to consciousness. Please allow me to attempt a simple and concise definition that may be acceptable for the posed question 'Can we create consciousness?' I define a being, entity, and/or thing as being conscious when that being, entity, and/or thing possess a 'self' that is aware of the environment we {conscious humans} exist in and is capable of reacting with that environment for the benefit of itself.

Martian Visitor wrote:

I DO think this somewhat. Animals have consciousness, because the relationship to humans in that respect is obvious to say the least. I think that eventually we will define consciousness as such, because we simply cannot prove that a machine is conscious like we are, no matter how "human" or complex we can make it. It just does not fit the standards we've come to understand.

This is very confused thinking. It doesn't matter if we can prove a machine is conscious, if it is, it is.

I agree and that is a simple and logical answer. The problem we have here in this thread is a lack of focus - most do not want to answer the basic question "Can we create consciousness? and are in fact making the question more complex than need be. But something has been proven and for want of a better definition I will call it UniversalAlien's rule one: That if enough ideas or concepts are used to decide the answer to a simple question, it is possible to so confuse that question so as to make it unanswerable! And yes a conscious artificial intelligence machine might be better and more capable of giving the simple and logical answer required to the question than the diverse thinking of the humanoid mechanism {or consciousness}.

heeltap wrote:"This is very confused thinking. It doesn't matter if we can prove a machine is conscious, if it is, it is." All of a sudden everyone but you is wrong. MV, I thought you were above such ways of putting things. Qualia are complex micro-issues as Consciousness is a macro-issue. The meaning of words is at issue always. Definitions too. If you want to argue that consciousness can be incarnated in a man-made mechanism put up the example and overcome objections. For the record color associations upon experiencing colors of a given class is the original example of the qualia issue. It is as much a psychological problem as it is a metaphysical problem. My quotation from a source on the net may not be acceptable to you nor, my own simplified statement too. But just saying it is wrong is not a sufficient rebuttal . If you are putting yourself up here as the authority/expert here on what Qualia and Consciousness are, please proceed to sufficiently define them to the satisfaction of all the best participants here! And then post your credentials for us to see. TOM

I can not speak for MV but you heeltap are accentuating my point about so over-complicating a simple question so as to render an answer impossible. For example you mention color. I have a limited color blindness. Am I less conscious than you? Probably and to some extent you could say I am - but I am still aware and conscious as are people and animals who are completely colorblind. You ask for a definition of consciousness that we all can accept so as to answer the original question. I will again give one definition of consciousness that is simple, understandable and which will allow an answer to the initial question:

Since there still seems to be a question of exactly what we are talking about as to consciousness. Please allow me to attempt a simple and concise definition that may be acceptable for the posed question 'Can we create consciousness?' I define a being, entity, and/or thing as being conscious when that being, entity, and/or thing possess a 'self' that is aware of the environment we {conscious humans} exist in and is capable of reacting with that environment for the benefit of itself.

Of course you may have another definition of consciousness and if we asked everyone who has posted on this thread so far we might find each has their own definition of consciousness. And yes there are many books written on what is consciousness. My point is we are not here asking what is consciousness, though I will agree that is part of the issue, but rather we are asking whether we can create it. Therefore, at some point we will have to accept a definition of consciousness or the attempt to answer whether we can create it will be futile.

heeltap wrote:OMG ! What a surprise! It seems this thread only follows a familiar pattern in that it lacks a satisfactory definition of consciousness!

That is exactly what the problem is. Heeltap I have no doubt that you probably have more philosophical knowledge than any other three posters on this forum added together {if that is possible}. But my main criticism of where we have been going here is that the thread has turned into a debate on what is consciousness - and that debate requires at least one or more books, and even then the issue will remain forever debatable.

So again I will give my simple definition, not because it is in anyway the best definition possible and I am sure others might have a better one, but because it is simple, manageable and could be used to answer the original question:

Since there still seems to be a question of exactly what we are talking about as to consciousness. Please allow me to attempt a simple and concise definition that may be acceptable for the posed question 'Can we create consciousness?' I define a being, entity, and/or thing as being conscious when that being, entity, and/or thing possess a 'self' that is aware of the environment we {conscious humans} exist in and is capable of reacting with that environment for the benefit of itself.