Nansen And His Boat

Starfarers, 1.

Nansen converses with his boat:

"'Is that wise?' The synthetic voice remained as calm as always. Once in a while you had to remind yourself that there was no awareness behind the panel, no true mind, only a lot of sophisticated hardware and software." (p. 19)

That paragraph, followed by the single word, "Discuss," could be presented as a question in a Philosophy exam. 

Does the boat's computer not pass the Turing test? Maybe it would fail the test if pressed for further conversation or discussion? Remaining calm in the face of danger might imply unawareness? But consciousness without emotional response is logically possible. I think that either there is or there is not mind. The phrase, "true mind," confuses the issue. Some philosophers argue that brain and mind are "sophisticated hardware and software." 

I think that if any x can be described fully without attributing consciousness to it then there is no reason to attribute consciousness to it whether x is:

an inanimate object;

a plant;

an item of furniture;

any other artifact;

sophisticated hardware and software.

The simplest explanation of animal and human behaviour is that these organisms are conscious and we make this judgement by studying not their brains but their behaviour, including, in the case of human beings, linguistic behaviour.

If any software can be fully described without attributing consciousness to it but it nevertheless passes the Turing test, then I will have a major philosophical problem but let's see what happens.

Starfarers goes down the fictional path of no conscious AI's just as There Will Be Time goes down the path of no causality violations.