[ExI] Newbie Question: Consciousness and Intelligence

[Gordon Swobe]

--- On Sat, 2/13/10, Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com> wrote:

>> I can't know what it's like to be a flatworm
> 
> Nor can you know what it is like to be a woman, a chinese,
> an octuagenarian, or for that matter an identical twin of
> yourself.

Actually I can infer a great deal about what it's like to be them. I see that they have nervous systems very much like mine, eyes and skin and noses and ears very much like mine, and so on, and from these biological facts *in combination* with their intelligent communications I can know with near certainty that they have consciousness very much like mine. 

I cannot do the same for flatworms or computers or amoebas.
 
> Do you really need to make further assumptions as to
> hypothetical non-phenomenical features shared by them but not by other
> entities who may be able to pass it just as well?

As you probably know by now if you've read my posts, I think the Turing test will give false positives for certain computers that we may develop in the not too distant future.

By "false positives" I mean that weak AI computers will pass the test, but that the test does not measure the existence of consciousness or subjective experience or intentionality; it does not and cannot test for strong AI. The Turing test will give false positives for strong AI.
 
> I am simply insisting that any such immaterial feature that can be 
> "projected" on other living organisms, or on the restricted subset 
> thereof represented by alert, non-infant, educated, Turing-test 
> qualified human beings can be with identical plausibility projected on 
> anything else exhibiting a good enough analogy of the interactions you 
> can have with them.

Again, the Turing test does not measure the strong AI attributes that concern me. 

It is true that I "project" consciousness onto other humans but I don't do this based solely on their ability to pass the Turing test or on their interactions with me. As above, I do it based also on their physiology.

-gts