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- Susan J. Blackmore (2003). Consciousness in Meme Machines. Journal of Consciousness Studies 10 (4):19-30.Setting aside the problems of recognising consciousness in a machine, this article considers what would be needed for a machine to have human-like conscious- ness. Human-like consciousness is an illusion; that is, it exists but is not what it appears to be. The illusion that we are a conscious self having a stream of experi- ences is constructed when memes compete for replication by human hosts. Some memes survive by being promoted as personal beliefs, desires, opinions and pos- sessions, leading to the formation of a memeplex (or selfplex). Any machine capa- ble of imitation would acquire this type of illusion and think it was conscious. Robots that imitated humans would acquire an illusion of self and consciousness just as we do. Robots that imitated each other would develop their own separate languages, cultures and illusions of self. Distributed seflplexes in large networks of machines are also possible. Unanswered questions include what remains of consciousness without memes, and whether artificial meme machines can ever transcend the illusion of self consciousness.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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The development of conscious machines faces a number of difficult issues such as the apparent immateriality of mind, qualia and self-awareness. Also consciousness-related cognitive processes such as perception, imagination, motivation and inner speech are a technical challenge. It is foreseen that the development of machine consciousness would call for a system approach; the developer of conscious machines should consider complete systems that integrate the cognitive processes seamlessly and process information in a transparent way with representational and non-representational information-processing modes. An overview of the main issues is given and some possible solutions are outlined.
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| | Other links: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Wegner’s analysis of the illusion of conscious will is close to my own account of how conscious experiences relate to brain processes. But our analyses differ somewhat on how conscious will is not an illusion. Wegner argues that once conscious will arises it enters causally into subsequent mental processing. I argue that while his causal story is accurate, it remains a first-person story. Conscious free will is not an illusion in the sense that this first-person story is compatible with and complementary to a third-person account of voluntary processing in the mind/brain.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... I present a view of conscious perception that supposes a processual unity between the activity in the brain and the perceived event in the external world. I use the rainbow to provide a first example, and subsequently extend the same rationale to more complex examples such as perception of objects, faces and movements. I use a process-based approach as an explanation of ordinary perception and other variants, such as illusions, memory, dreams and mental imagery. This approach provides new insights into the problem of conscious representation and phenomenal consciousness. It is a form of anti- cranialism different from but related to other kinds of externalism.
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| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: citeseer.ist.psu.edu cogs.susx.ac.uk cogs.sussex.ac.uk | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Throughout history there have been people who say it is all illusion. I think they may be right. But if they are right what could this mean? If you just say "It's all an illusion" this gets you nowhere - except that a whole lot of other questions appear. Why should we all be victims of an illusion, instead of seeing things the way they really are? What sort of illusion is it anyway? Why is it like that and not some other way? Is it possible to see through the illusion? And if so what happens next.
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| | Other links: susanblackmore.co.uk ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | At my library | More options ... A "machine" is any causal physical system, hence we are machines, hence machines can be conscious. The question is: which kinds of machines can be conscious? Chances are that robots that can pass the Turing Test -- completely indistinguishable from us in their behavioral capacities -- can be conscious (i.e. feel), but we can never be sure (because of the "other-minds" problem). And we can never know HOW they have minds, because of the "mind/body" problem. We can only know how they pass the Turing Test, but not how, why or whether that makes them feel.
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| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: cogprints.org eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk cogsci.soton.ac.uk ecs.soton.ac.uk users.ecs.soton.ac.uk ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: cogprints.org eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk cogsci.soton.ac.uk ecs.soton.ac.uk users.ecs.soton.ac.uk ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Discussion of Susan J. Blackmore, Consciousness in meme machines
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