"The robot can only do what it was designed to do. Self-programming has extended these limits, to the point where actual consciousness may occur if desired." (p. 503)
May it? In organisms, sensation and self-programming result from interactions with the environment. I am still bothered by the philosophical mind-body problem.
I am conscious that I am conscious. The simplest explanation of animal, including human, behavior is that these organisms are conscious as I know/am conscious that I am. We can fully describe the movements of a mechanical toy without attributing consciousness to the toy so we do not say that it is conscious except in a child's imaginings or in other works of fiction. But we can fully describe electrically firing and chemically interacting neurons without attributing consciousness to them...
On Earth, naturally selected organismic sensitivity to environmental observations quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into conscious sensation. We know that quantitative changes become qualitative. Quantitatively increasing temperature changes solids into liquids, then into gasses. Quantitatively different wavelengths cause different colors. But why did the qualitative change to consciousness occur? Could there be a planet where naturally selected organismic sensitivity to environmental alterations quantitatively increased until it produced mobile, sensitive and responsive but still unconscious organisms?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And of course there is also Anderson's story "The High Ones," where a totalitarian regime, wittingly or not, set in place policies that would reverse the inteliigence/consciousness of the Zolotyans. The horrific fate of that race fits your thought about a species that was "...mobile, sensitive and responsive but still unconscious organisms."
Ad astra! Sean
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