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Consciousness is necessary to thought
Consciousness and thought are necessarily linked. Without consciousness a system cannot think.
RELATED ARTICLES
Explain
⌅
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence☜A collaboratively editable version of Robert Horns brilliant and pioneering debate map Can Computers Think?—exploring 50 years of philosophical argument about the possibility of computer thought.☜F1CEB7
⌃
Can computers think? [1]
Can computers think? [1]☜Can a computational system possess all important elements of human thinking or understanding? ☜FFB597
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No: computers can't be conscious [6]
No: computers can't be conscious [6]☜Machines cant have subjective experiences. Machines cant consciously perceive, feel, or remember anything. And, because consciousness is necessary for thought, machines cant think either.☜59C6EF
■
Consciousness is necessary to thought
Consciousness is necessary to thought☜Consciousness and thought are necessarily linked. Without consciousness a system cannot think.☜98CE71
↳
Consciousness before concepts
Consciousness before concepts☜Thinking of an object conceptually—ie as falling under some category—presupposes consciousness of that object. Thus, attempts by logicians to account for the notion of conceptual thought with propositional functions presupposes consciousness.☜98CE71
↳
Judgments are grounded in phenomenology
Judgments are grounded in phenomenology☜Predication and judgment characterise the activity of the natural and human sciences. But such theoretical thinking is grounded in a more basic—phenomenological—life world of structures of bodily skill, tacit knowledge, and general understanding.☜98CE71
↳
The Connection Principle
The Connection Principle☜Theres a necessary connection between consciousness and mentality. All thinking—as a form of mentality—is a least in principle accessible to consciousness. Even unconscious thoughts involve consciousness, as they can potentially become conscious.☜98CE71
↳
Thinking is essentially conscious
Thinking is essentially conscious☜Its self-evident that any thought in a thinking being—or soul—must be conscious. Thinking can take many forms, including: sensory perception, imagination, understanding, desire, and doubt.☜98CE71
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Conscious experiences not required
Conscious experiences not required☜The truth of a statement about some person X—eg, X thinks or X understands— doesnt depend on the existence of a correlated conscious thinking event or conscious understanding event in X.☜EF597B
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Consciousness is epiphenomenal
Consciousness is epiphenomenal☜Conscious experience is a mere collateral product of our nervous system, unable to exert any causal influence but caused by the activities therein.☜EF597B
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Consciousness is irrelevant psychology
Consciousness is irrelevant psychology☜Consciousness is irrelevant to thought, to mentality, and in general to the study of mind. Thinking and consciousness are independent of each other, if consciousness even exist at all.☜EF597B
↳
No mental activity is conscious
No mental activity is conscious☜None of the processing that results in conscious experiences is itself conscious—eg when we consciously see an image of a chair and a table standing out against a background, we have no conscious experience of assembling them to make a chair.☜EF597B
↳
Thinking doesn't entail consciousness
Thinking doesn't entail consciousness☜A machine could think without being conscious, because thinking does not entail consciousness. Thinking is merely associated with consciousness in humans, but this association doesnt imply that machines must be conscious in order to think.☜EF597B
⇥
No mental activity is conscious
No mental activity is conscious☜None of the processing that results in conscious experiences is itself conscious—eg when we consciously see an image of a chair and a table standing out against a background, we have no conscious experience of assembling them to make a chair.☜FFFACD
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Can never have a conscious experience
Can never have a conscious experience☜A robot can behave as if it were having a certain conscious experience. But it can never actually have a conscious experience, because experience and behaviour fall into two separate logical categories.☜98CE71
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Computers are not introspective
Computers are not introspective☜Thought requires the capacity for introspective episodic memories. Such memories of life episodes play a significant role in human thinking but are completely lacking in computer thinking. ☜98CE71
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Computers can't have feelings
Computers can't have feelings☜Computers are mechanisms, not organisms. Only living organisms can be said to have feelings. Therefore, computers cant have feelings.☜98CE71
□
Consciousness excluded by definition
Consciousness excluded by definition☜The word machine excludes not only all things that can live or die but specifically all things capable of being conscious or unconscious, because that is part of the meaning of machine. ☜98CE71
□
Mechanisms can't possess consciousness
Mechanisms can't possess consciousness☜No mechanism could consicously feel pleasure, success, grief, flattery, or any of the range of emotions and thoughts that humans experience due to their complex neuropysiology. No mechanism, then, can possess truly human consciousness.☜98CE71
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Consciousness is physical
Consciousness is physical☜Physicalism is the doctrine that everything is physical. If everything is physical then consciousness is physical as well. So a conscious computer or robot could be built out of physical parts. ☜EF597B
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Higher-order representational structures
Higher-order representational structures☜Consciousness is a multilevel hierarchical structure of representations that allows higher-level representations to monitor lower-level representations.☜EF597B
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Implementable in functional system
Implementable in functional system☜Properly organized functional states generate consciousness. Such organization exists in the brain and can be built into computers as well.☜EF597B
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Let's just say robots are conscious
Let's just say robots are conscious☜We simply make a decision one way or the other about robot consciousness, because there is no correct answer to the question, Is that (psychologically, isomorphically and behaviourally) similar robot conscious?☜EF597B
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Rejection has undesirable consequences
Rejection has undesirable consequences☜Rejection of the idea that machines can be conscious leads is more closely to solipsism and epiphenomenalism (see detailed text).☜EF597B
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Rule following doesn't deny consciousness
Rule following doesn't deny consciousness☜Thorough descriptions of consciously initiated human behaviour reveals plans, plans are a form of rule following, and humans are conscious—the fact that machines are programmed to follow certain rules is no reason to deny them consciousness.☜EF597B
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Graph of this discussion
Graph of this discussion☜Click this to see the whole debate, excluding comments, in graphical form☜dcdcdc
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David Price
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Entry date (GMT):
8/27/2006 10:12:00 PM
Last edit date (GMT):
12/12/2007 6:02:00 PM
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