<div dir="ltr"><br><div>Hi Jason,</div><div><br></div><div>You had a long list of attributes in one of your replies to that list.</div><div><br></div><div><b style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">Consciousness is:</b><div dir="auto" style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><ul><li>Awareness of Information</li><li>A knowledge State</li><li>An Infinite Class (infinite possible variations and permutations, configurations)</li><li>A requirement for: Experience, Thought, Feeling, Knowing, Seeing, Noticing (can any of these things exist absent consciousness? E.g. some part of system that acts like it knows must really know.)</li><li>An activity (not a passive state of 0s and 1s, operations/behavior/actions give meaning and context to information and how it is processed and what it means)</li><li>Is it a recursive relationship? A model of environment including self?</li><li>Is it undefinable?</li><li>Word origin: "con" (together/with/unified/united) "scious" (knowledge): unified knowledge</li><li>It exists in the abstract informational state, not in the material</li><li>A meaningful interpretation of information</li></ul><div><b>Information is:</b></div></div><div dir="auto" style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><ul><li>A difference that makes a difference</li><li>A comparison, differentiation, distinction</li><li>Specification / Indication</li><li>Negative entropy</li><li>A decrease in uncertainty</li><li>A probability of being in different states</li><li>Bits, digits, a number (representations of information)</li><li>A subspace of a larger space</li><li>A state of a finite state machine</li><li>Requires an interpreter (A system to be informed) to be meaningful</li></ul><div><b>A subject is:</b></div></div><div dir="auto" style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><ul><li>A system to be informed</li><li>A processor of information</li><li>A <span style="color:rgb(60,64,67);background-color:rgb(253,226,147)">knower</span> (a believer)</li><li>An inside viewer</li><li>A first-person</li><li>A possessor of knowledge</li><li>An interpreter of information</li><li>A modeler of environment or self (or both)</li></ul><div><b>Knowledge is:</b></div></div><div dir="auto" style="color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><ul><li>An apprehended truth</li><li>A true belief (bet)</li><li>Not always shareable (when self-referential)</li><li>A relationship between two objects or object and itself</li></ul><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><img src="cid:ii_l2d00itf0" alt="3_robots_tiny.png" width="320" height="118"><br></div><div>In addition to all 3 of these systems being able to tell you something is red, each could also be engineered do everything in your list.</div><div><br></div><div>Consciousness is less about functionality, than it is about "what is it like".</div><div><br></div><div>A redness quality is not an intrinsic quality of the strawberry, it is a quality of your conscious knowledge of a strawberry. The only difference between the first 2 is a red green signal inverter in its optic nerve, changing the definition of redness for that one. You need a dictionary to know what the word red means. The intrinsic colorness quality your brains represents knowledge of red things with is your definition of the word red.</div><div><br></div><div>All 3 could also be minimally engineered so that all they can do is tell you the strawberry, nothing more, including most of the stuff in your list. But I would still classify the first two as conscious, since both of their conscious knowledge is like something. The first one's redness is like your redness, the second one's is like your greenness, and the third one represents knowledge with strings of ones and zeros, all of which you need a dictionary to first know what the hardware representing each one or zero is, and after that, again, to know what the word 'red', made up of strings of those ones and zeros represents. </div><div><br></div><div>Brent</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Apr 23, 2022 at 11:55 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">I recently posted this question recently to the <a href="https://groups.google.com/g/everything-list/c/Ga8KWzjM_dk" target="_blank">everything list</a>, but I know many here are also deeply interested in the topic of consciousness so, I thought I should post it to this group too. My question was:<div><br></div><div>These "artificial life" forms, (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq_mdJjNRPT11IF4NFyLcIWJ1C0Z3hTAX" target="_blank">seen here</a>), have neural networks that evolved through natural selection, can adapt to a changing environment, and can learn to distinguish between "food" and "poison" in their environment.<div><br></div><div>If simple creatures like worms or insects are conscious, (because they have brains, and evolved), then wouldn't these artificial life forms be conscious for the same reasons?</div><div><br></div><div>Why or why not?</div></div><div><br></div><div>Jason</div></div>
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