The Extra Ingredient
Richard Brown, Joseph LeDoux, David Rosenthal,
Biology and Philosophy,
Mar 13, 2021
Most of the discussion around Unlimited Associative Learning (UAL) is focused on identifying the minimal state of consciousness that would distinguish, say, a dog from the ball it's chasing. That's what we see, for example, in this 2016 discussion from Bronfman, Ginsburg and Jablonka. The latter two authors offer a significant expansion of the idea in their book The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness (read Birch's review and a good short article by Birch, Ginsburg and Jablonka).
What interests me in this discussion is that the eight markers they identify (global accessibility and broadcast, binding/unification, selective attention and exclusion, intentionality, integration over time, evaluative system, agency and embodiment, registration of a self/other distinction) are all also markers often held forth to distinguish between natural and artificial intelligence. They are the markers of some sort of understanding that proponents say a machine can never possess. That's why this response by Brown, LeDoux and Rosenthal is important. Birch et al "offer no argument that their proposed features do jointly suffice for the presence of conscious experience,beyond saying that many theorists will accept it." The arguments against artificial consciousness similarly lack substance.
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