Could A Machine Be Conscious

The fascination with consciousness dates back to the time of Plato and Descartes. Since those times the term “consciousness” has spurned controversy in many scientific fields, including the fields of biology, psychology, and neuroscience. However, with the recent advancements in brain imaging technologies, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), human consciousness has shifted from being a subjective, abstract idea into being a observable scientific phenomenon. As neuroimaging capabilities progress, the public interest in consciousness also grows.

If we look at the definition of consciousness, which implies that ‘one has to be aware of all its surroundings and wellbeing’ then machines can certainly not be conscious; as they have all the operations and data already programmed in them by some external forces and are only aware of those situations which have

Alan Turing, as a Physicalist, saw the mind as the brain, since the brain is the physical object. Applying such views to machines, Turing’s Imitation Game ‘test’ is supposed to demonstrate his claim that certain machines should count as “thinking things” in the same way that we humans do. His argument being that, if a machine could imitate a human well enough to deceive a person that it was not a machine, then it should be considered “conscious.” He found that since most of what we base our foundation of consciousness on (our judgments and interactions with others), if we cannot see the responder in the game (i.e. the computer), and it responds as well as human, then it should also be considered a “thinking thing.” Turing also expected that one day machines would be able to imitate our minds so well, that we would not be able to tell the difference between a real mind or “thinking thing,” and a

     Consciousness is a difficult term to grasp; so much so, that many scientists will not even attempt to define the term, much less search for it’s evidence. Most however, do agree that consciousness must include certain aspects; specifically cognition, self-awareness, memory, and abstract thought.

It seems to us that we are in control of our mind and body as a unified self. It means that we have free will to act. We can imagine it is like a homunculus in the Cartesian Theater which is responsible for making every decision in our brain. However, unless we can prove there is a homunculus in our brain, there is no consciousness. Libet and Wegner challenge the view that we do not have free will. “We can’t possibly know the tremendous number of mechanical influences on our behavior because we inhabit an extraordinarily complicated machine.” (Wegner, 2002)

In today’s society, artificial intelligence appears a daunting and frightening area, however this idea was embraced by Turing. He was a pioneer of imitation, that is, the imitation of the human mind in a machine. The perspectives of Turing with regards to artificial intelligence were new and original, nobody had questioned whether or not a machine can think or likened one to the human mind. It is important to remember that artificial intelligence is only an attempt at recreating the human machine, as Turing put it, which is the mind. In 1942, Turing was quoted saying: “We do not wish to penalise the machine for its inability to shine in beauty competitions, nor to penalise a man for losing in a race against an aeroplane” which demonstrates one of Turing’s key perspectives. Man and machine are going to be different, an attempt at copying the human mind, will not yield a human, but a machine, reinforcing the fact that artificial intelligence is only an attempt to imitate the mind. A paper, written by Turing, outlines an “imitation test,” a test which contrasts the power of the human mind to that of a machine. This test was developed by Turing in order to help the public grasp the concept of an artificial intelligence: it precedes as follows. A participant is asked to take part in two conversations, one of which is with a machine, the other with a human. Now imagine if the participant was unable to decide which was the machine and which was human. Turing

Overall a majority of scientists believe that the brain alone creates conscious experience. The brain is described as a genetically programmed computer whose electrical and biochemical processes produce what we experience as thought and decision-making. It is therefore no surprise that science headlines today suggest that the experience of free-will is merely an illusion, a byproduct of so-called background noise in the brain. In popular media we are presented with the black and white dilemma. We must choose between reason and rationality or superstition and blind faith. However for decades some acclaim scientists around the world have conducted consciousness research that provides a very different picture.

In 1950 the well-known mathematician Alan Turing has elaborated an experiment and test based on the interaction of a person with the unknown object in another room. At the end of the experiment the machine that was proclaimed to behave as a person passed the test. The author of the text cites that the participants could hear the questions, type, or ask it aloud. In the response they observed statements that were synthesized on the screen. 1990 Hugh Loebner has granted an award to a designer of the computer that could pass the test.

The idea of consciousness has been contemplated throughout the course of neurobiology and behavior. When does it begin or end? And what, precisely, is consciousness? Though researchers may only approximate the answers to these questions, a few things may be inferred. Since the subconscious mind is the sleeping mind, the conscious mind can be thought of as the awakened mind, the mind which shows itself to others most often. (1) This is not to say that the conscious mind is reality, because (as will later be explained) reality is quite subjective. (1) It is just that the conscious mind is the one most people associate with reality. For example, people who experience an event while dreaming

Computationalists and representationalists believe that machines can think. Like Alan Turing they believe a simple test called the Turing Test will be sufficient to prove consciousness because intelligence is an operational attribute that allows symbol manipulation. (Heil, 115) In this paper I will argue that their claim is bogus, computers could never, in their current state, be classified as a minded. Thus the Turing Test is an invalid test.

Alan Turing was a British philosopher who wrote the paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” that discusses about artificial intelligence and the Turing test. In the paper, Alan Turing believes that machines could think however it is complicated to determine if machines or programmed digital computers have that ability to think just like humans. “If the meaning of the words machine and think are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question” (Turing 1). According to Alan Turing, he questions if machines can have the ability to think. In order to determine that machines can think, he tested it by having a machine play the imitation game where a machine has to emulate the behavior of a human. In this game, the interrogator asks

A machine has to be aware to be conscious. Unlike a machine, humans that are

Being able to explain why something is unconscious is more practical than to explain why something is conscious. To even grasp physicalism one usually makes observation of the function, dynamic, and structure. In addition, there is an explanation of what a thing does, how it changes over a period of time, and how it is assembled. However, even after a detailed explanation of the function, dynamic, and so on…one may still ask, why is it conscious, Thus, conscious presents a problem for physicalism. An explanation of consciousness is much more complex, and may even create a boundary of what physicalism can explain. Due to this problem, there are unanswered questions when it comes to physicalism.

Consciousness is a broad topic that spans many different schools of thought. Its role in

Chimpanzees, close relatives to ours, have a developed social and familial structure. They may be conscious