Re: Conciousness

I was most fascinated to read the analogy about the person in the "black box" with only two slots, INPUT and OUTPUT, and the rule book. I disagree with the notion that such a system can be considered conscious.

This system is just an automaton, doing only what it is programmed to do. If the system, on it's own, without any input, said, "Hello, how are you?", we would know that it was conscious, because it had an original thought.

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Re-boot it: ifi it still doesn't work, boot it out the window

I agree, except for the part that says we would know it was Conscious "because" it had an original thought. "Original" is problematic enough, but I mean merely that Creativity is a separate process from Consciousness and it cannot be assumed that the presence of one implies presence of the other.

Plenty of people whom I would say are conscious (at some level) yet display no creativity whatsoever, and in the other direction, isn't it the basic argument of creationists that nothing "new" can be created other than by "intent?" Evolution would be an example of creativity-through-chaotic-processes rather than creativity-through-conscious-intent - and that's NOT impossible.