Artificial Sentience Essay

no, a machine could not be conscious. I propose that those who argue the yes case that a machine

In the past, philosophers differ in support of the higher-order theory of consciousness since there are issues that arise in clarifying the difference-conscious mental state and those that

“contents of consciousness that possess sensory qualities as opposed to those that are purely verbal or abstract”

In this essay I will argue that digital computers are not capable of conscious thinking. First I will use Searle's argument to defend my view. I will then explain the features of consciousness that he talks about in order to use them against counterarguments.

Rosenthal’s definition of what is consciousness revolves around two distinctions – creature consciousness and state consciousness. Creature consciousness is a state where an organism is simply awake and aware of surroundings, but that is all that needs to happen for an organism to be creature conscious. On the other hand, state consciousness involves mental and intentional states. In other words, there is an existence of beliefs and desires. Therefore, it is argued that state consciousness is transitive, meaning there is intentionality behind an action. In terms of phenomenal

Consciousness, a material property that is not explained in its entirety through physics, is our rational capacity for understanding the functions of human life in this world. The mind has an element in its nature that differentiates it from the physical. Understanding the functions of the mind has both an objective and subjective aspects. Consciousness is the subjective, inner life of our mind. It is based on the emotions and ideas that arise from perceiving external activities. Knowledge of consciousness comes from our knowledge of the brain and knowledge of experience. As stated by Nagel, "There are facts about conscious experience that cannot be deduced from physical facts about the functioning of the brain.” It is known that subjective experiences emerge from physical processes; however, it is yet unknown how or why this is. In order to reach an understanding of consciousness, theories based on philosophical and neuroscientific laws are being

The subject of the conscious mind has long been a debate in the world of psychology; what exactly is it and where does it occur in the brain. Unfortunately, the debate still continues as there is no concrete answer currently available. Nevertheless, it is understood what it means to be conscious. One is aware of when they are awake, sleeping, or thinking. The topic of the conscious mind was historically left to scholars in the field of philosophy and religion with little input from the scientific side (Brainbank, 2013). But the more information that becomes readily available about the human brain, the more scientists are ready to tack the controversial subject.

"...an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is to be that organism—something it is like for the organism." (Nagel, 1974)

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

Consciousness refers to the relationship and interactions between our mind and its surrounding environments. Consciousness fades when the normal patterns of waking neural activity in the brain are replaced by the patterns characteristic of sleep, or when the tissues of the brain are damaged physically or by intoxicants. We do not have a set explanation has to how brain activity produces consciousness. It is concluded that consciousness is an elemental component of the universe that cannot be discussed or analyzed any further by the human race.

To define consciousness we must make an assumption, that an equilateral state of being is common throughout all who can express it. Be it a normal waking consciousness, or an altered state of behaviour. To develop a testable parameter we rely on physiological responses, which are relative and subjected, if a persons conscious awareness overrides their physical response objective measures become unreliable and thus invalid. Because of this we have struggled to define consciousness, philosophers such as David Chalmers equate the mind and the body to be distinctive seperate forms of sensory transference. Like a passenger in the vehicle of the body, this dualist method of thinking suggest that the mental state can’t be condensed into physical systems.

Thus the process of detangling or separating these theories, would forever remain an ongoing project. Thus for the purpose of this paper, I will only discuss one philosopher’s (William James’) view on the existence of consciousness.

The studies discussed above suggest that the late global ignition of a neural network of high-level brain areas accompanies conscious access. Still, these studies have little to say about why exactly one piece of information gains conscious access, while the other does not. Or put differently, because there is a limit to the content that can be consciously represented at a particular point in time (Dehaene & Changeux, 2011), the question is then what determines what exactly enters this limited capacity of consciousness. According to a recent proposition within the predictive processing framework, it is the unconscious perceptual inference that determines the content of consciousness (Hohwy, 2013). Specifically, conscious perception was proposed to be an “upshot of unconscious perceptual inference” (Hohwy, 2013, pp.

The mechanisms underlying conscious awareness and the exact nature of conscious experience still remain incomprehensible, despite increasing attention paid to it within the last decades. Moreover, it seems that we are not aware of many of the things that we perceive and such experiences have been termed as “unconscious”. Many psychological experiments have tried to prove the existence of unconscious perceptual processes by demonstrating that subjects are not consciously aware of stimuli, which nevertheless are perceived. A perception in the absence of conscious experience is often referred to as subliminal perception. Peirce and Jastrow (1885) were first to suggest that even stimuli

The issue of the origins of consciousness has been a problem that has philosophers and scientists alike, puzzled for years. Is it a matter of science? Can it be explained through neurobiological processes or is it just something that simply cannot be reduced to words? Rene Descartes had struggled with this issue centuries ago, trying to explain this problem through his idea of substance dualism. This idea states that the mind and body are of two separate worlds, the physical world and the mental world. From this sprouts the mind-body problem, the connection between mental phenomena and the physical world on which the mind depends. And century’s later, philosopher Edmund Husserl tries to tackle