<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>Swobe says that regardless of how intelligent it behaves, before we are justified in calling a machine conscious we must understand exactly how consciousness works. Swobe admits he has no understanding of consciousness but that hasn't stopped him from putting a whole bunch of stuff into the conscious or unconscious category. Why is he allowed to play from different rules than me, why the asymmetry?</div><div><br></div><div>It seems to me that if we want to investigate consciousness we should start with the only 2 things we know for sure about it:</div><div><br></div><div>1) Evolution produced consciousness at least once and almost certainly many billions of times.</div><div>2) If intelligence and consciousness were not inextricably linked Evolution would never have produced it.</div><div><br></div><div>From that I conclude that if you happen to run across a intelligent machine logically your default position should be that it is conscious rather than the reverse. </div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div> </div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></body></html>