🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <26534@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>In article <1992Oct2.225739.4915@guinness.idbsu.edu> holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes) writes:
>>In article <26519@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>
>>>Indeed, in expert systems, knowledge representation plus mechanical
>>>inferencing systems are not only capable of chains of deductive
>>>reasoning, and making hypotheses and testing them, but of explaining
>>>what they are doing and why they are doing it in a persuasively
>>>rational manner.
>
>>If they can do this, they are conscious.
>
>Many years ago to entertain some schoolkids I wrote a BASIC program
>based on ELIZA which was capable of having apparently sensible
>conversations with the user about how it worked. The point of the
>exercise was to present them with something that behaved as though it
>was intelligent and conscious, but which was capable of dispelling the
>illusion by explaining the simple trickery involved.
>
>I take it that you would have insisted that the program's dispelling
>of the illusion was the trickery, and that I had actually succeeded in
>writing a conscious computer program in 60Kbytes of BASIC?

No.  But ELIZA does not in fact have internal representations which it
really uses to explain what it is doing to a questioner; its
apparently intelligent responses _are_ a trick.  The expert systems
referred to by the original posting do, and so, in my view, they are
conscious.

This requires explanation.  I think that _everything_ has "qualia", in
Cahlmers's sense of having a "bare experiential feel".  Consciousness,
for me, has something to do with "knowing oneself" to some extent.  I
would recognize any system which maintains an internal model of its
own activity and can provide answers to queries about same as
(minimally) conscious.  Note that consciousness does not necessarily
go with being terribly bright.

>-- 
>Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
>Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
>5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205


-- 
The opinions expressed		|     --Sincerely,
above are not the "official"	|     M. Randall Holmes
opinions of any person		|     Math. Dept., Boise State Univ.
or institution.			|     holmes@opal.idbsu.edu