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From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Subject: Re: Consciousness
References: <3vpcjp$sgv@ping1.ping.be> <3vpf4m$19m@ping1.ping.be>
Message-ID: <DCzo4z.9Lz@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: news@festival.ed.ac.uk (remote news read deamon)
Organization: University of Edinburgh
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 1995 11:05:22 GMT
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In article <3vpf4m$19m@ping1.ping.be> Stephan.Verbeeck@ping.be (Stephan Verbeeck) writes:

>From reactions I got from several people and from what I read here I get the
>strong impression that AI folks are not concerned much with the question what
>consciousness is.

>I think however they should because (and that is my opinion which you don't
>have to take for facts) a fitting definition of consciousness is half of the
>answer how to build an "real" artificial intelligence!

>Just take a minute to figure out what the difference is between the words "to
>compute" and "to think".  Most of our problemsolving skills can be captured by
>advanced programming techniques but the products of that genius only compute
>a solution.  Sure they (AI's or call them what you will) come up with the
>right answer but they are not AWARE of the problem they solve.  And that THE
>difference between to compute and to think!  Let me add that I consider it a
>complete waste of time to spend time on something that only computes.

The most important reason why AI researchers are currently not
bothering about consciousness is that nobody has managed to point out
to them a problem which requires consciousness in order to be solved,
and they are doing very nicely getting non-conscious machines to solve
a great variety of problems.

You could change this state of affairs very easily. All you have to do
is to specify a problem which cannot be solved without consciousness.
Note that human beings do seem to use consciousness to solve many
problems (such as playing chess) which we know do not *require*
consciousness to be solved, so it is not sufficient to show a problem
which humans cannot solve without consciousness.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@aifh.ed.ac.uk         +44 (0)131 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
"The mind reigns, but does not govern" -- Paul Valery
