Can a man-made computer become conscious?

[Someone here]

Do you think a man-made computer could ever become conscious? Can it have a soul? Why or why not?

, I think consciousness is a faculty of the soul and I think the soul was placed by some higher power (God if you please) and regardless of what technology we produce I don't think we can get to the point where we can create a soul or consciousness. I do however I think there is a point we could get to that is a exceptional simultion of consciousness.

For example, If any of you have ever tried those new 20 questions games. Those things are scary and it is aparantly thinking and reading your mind. I do not know how it does it but it's pretty convincing. Just to note It asks you 20 questions and then it tels you what you're thinking of, it guessed spider monkey..not just monkey, spider monkey!! It's unreal

 

Edited January 31, 2022 by Someone here

[Tim R]

@Someone here

Not to come across condescending, but at this point I am rather surprised that you'd ask this question. You think consciousness is this, that or the other, but it doesn't matter what you think consciousness is. Consciousness cannot be thought. You're wasting your time thinking about these matters. Not per se because you're asking the question, that is no problem - but because you constantly ask these sort of questions without seeming to truly try to come to an answer. Philosophizing is good, but after a certain point, philosophy becomes frustrated. 

[LastThursday]

If you're talking downloading someone's consciousness into a computer to make a copy of them, then no that will never happen. 

I do think within some of our lifetimes there will be robots and/or computers that are good enough to fool us. You'll be able to talk to them about their inner life and they will be largely autonomous and very fluid and lifelike. You can already see the beginnings of this for example GPT3 and various robots. All that's required is convergence of many different strands of development.

Really the question boils down to how you would know for certain that something or someone is conscious.

[Someone here]

27 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

 

Really the question boils down to how you would know for certain that something or someone is conscious.

That's an interesting question. I think the answer is having Internal inner subjective experience like seeing and hearing etc what's called qualia. 

[LastThursday]

9 minutes ago, Someone here said:

I think the answer is having Internal inner subjective experience like seeing and hearing etc what's called qualia. 

And how would you know that? What experiment or questions or observations would you need to carry out to know that a robot is having having an "inner subjective experience"?

[Gesundheit2]

Here's a chronological order for the epistemology behind this question:

1. There is the assumption that there is such a thing as consciousness, which is a phenomenon that you experience but have no clue what it is.
2. On top of that, an assumption that consciousness is a separate and distinct thing.
3. On top of both, an assumption that consciousness is not only a thing, but a property that things can have.
4. On top of that, an assumption that computers are not already conscious, and that human and animals are, and that humans can somehow figure out the secret behind consciousness.

[Someone here]

19 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

And how would you know that? What experiment or questions or observations would you need to carry out to know that a robot is having having an "inner subjective experience"?

I do not know. Maybe simply ask it if it's conscious. Idk how do you know that anyone is conscious?

[BipolarGrowth]

Only a person who has misunderstood the nature of consciousness would ask such a question. AI already can have more “awakened” or “spiritually substantive” conversations with you than many or possibly most humans. Only one who gives themselves the designation of being a conscious being would give that same designation to another amalgamation of form(s). 
 

I would ask yourself if you can have a soul, what a soul is, and how you can be sure of any of this. 

Edited January 31, 2022 by BipolarGrowth

[Nahm]

@Someone here

Neither people, nor computers, nor consciousness become conscious. That would be a fundamental misnomer which is quite local, and is not an ignore-ance which is widely preached. It is essentially contextualizing consciousness vs feeling directly, which consciousness is free to seemingly ‘do’. 

[LastThursday]

6 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Idk how do you know that anyone is conscious?

Exactly it. A question of epistemology.

@Gesundheit2's third point is on the money. You have to flip things around. None of us have consciousness, we are all manifestations of consciousness. Although thinking that way can seem completely alien to most people.

[Breakingthewall]

when you say conscious it seems like you mean having a self. a center that perceives, that is aware of itself as a being and that desires things, such as not disappearing for example. The thing is that this center, you, is more like a computer than it seems. a software that if is deactivated, you disappear.  

what happens is that you cannot see it, because you are the software. you can't see yourself, you think you're real, and you're the same as a computer

[Someone here]

@LastThursday @Nahm Some people have honestly debated whether computers have souls, but I don't think this can be possible.
A computer is a machine that is constructed from
all sorts of hardware, and it is certainly an
amazing invention, but I don't think it has the capacity to think and feel the way a human does.
It is, after all, a product of technology, and therefore, it cannot reason and feel like a human
being does. That's not to say that computers can't
accomplish great things. Like I said before, it is a
marvelous invention, but it is an impersonal one.
It spits out information, but not does not care
about how we respond to that information.

[Someone here]

@Breakingthewall you can have consciousness without a sense of self. But you cannot have a sense of self without consciousness. 

[Breakingthewall]

25 minutes ago, Someone here said:

@Breakingthewall you can have consciousness without a sense of self. But you cannot have a sense of self without consciousness. 

what is consciousness? first we should define that. according to the non-dualistic definition there is only consciousness, everything is within consciousness...whatever that is. So the computer is consciousness  

If you mean the ability to perceive, I'd say this is the self. It's very confusing because the self looks real, and looks that it's the only real thing that exists, but it isn't

Edited January 31, 2022 by Breakingthewall

[Nahm]

Cold water to the face and the breathing of oudoor air stat.  

[Someone here]

Quantum computers are just as schizophrenic as our minds are. With some proper modeling and "raising" them to recognize commonality in anomolies that occur by comparison to past stored memory data, then there may be a possibility that these types of computers could take on human stylistic consciousness which believes it thinks independently and can know what it doesn't

[Gesundheit2]

@Someone here Is a calculator conscious?

[Nahm]

7 minutes ago, Someone here said:

human stylistic consciousness

[Someone here]

8 minutes ago, Gesundheit2 said:

@Someone here Is a calculator conscious?

No. 

[LastThursday]

29 minutes ago, Someone here said:

A computer [...] is, after all, a product of technology, and therefore, it cannot reason and feel like a human

And technology is a product of humans.

We're just imbuing our technology with our own innate humanness. So definitely in time we can create automatons that are indistinguishable from humans, because we shape technology in our image. It will be a moot point whether they are conscious or not, or think like us under the hood. Only their outward appearance and behaviour will be relevant.