Can a machine be conscious

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Asking whether a machine can be conscious is rather like asking whether one has stopped beating one's wife: The question is so heavy with assumptions that either answer would be incriminating! The answer, of course, is: It depends entirely on what you mean by "machine"! If you mean the current generation of man-made devices (toasters, ovens, cars, computers, today's robots), the answer is: almost certainly not. Empirical Risk. Why "almost"? Two reasons, the first being the usual one: (1) "empirical risk." We know since at least Descartes that even scientific "laws" are merely very probable, not certain. Only mathematical laws -- which describe consequences that follow provably (i.e., on pain of contradiction) from our own assumptions -- are necessarily true. But this certainty and necessity are unnecessary for physics; almost-certainty will do. "Can a particle travel faster than the speed of light?" Almost certainly not (at least on current-best theory -- or at least the last word of i

Can a machine be conscious? How? Stevan Harnad Centre de Neuroscience de la Cognition (CNC) Université du Québec à Montréal CP 8888 Succursale Centre-Ville Montréal, Québec, Canada H3C 3P8 harnad@uqam.ca http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Asking whether a machine can be conscious is rather like asking whether one has stopped beating one's wife: The question is so heavy with assumptions that either answer would be incriminating! The answer, of course, is: It depends entirely on what you mean by "machine"! If you mean the current generation of man-made devices (toasters, ovens, cars,…

Can a machine be conscious

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