Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
On this view many kinds of machine might be conscious, but only
a particular kind of machine could be conscious in a human-like,
illusory way. It would have to be capable of imitation (otherwise
it could not replicate memes) and live in a community of similar
meme sharing machines (otherwise there would be no pressure for
memeplexes
3
to form). Such a machine would, if this theory is
correct, be a victim of the same illusions of consciousness as we
humans are. That is, it would think it had an inner self who was
conscious. Ultimately, it would start wondering what conscious-
ness was and trying to solve the hard problem. [4]
Another luminary in this field, Aaron Sloman, believes that the concept
of consciousness has not been clearly enough identified and therefore
“much of what is written about how experimental results relate to con-
sciousness is ambiguous and muddled”. [6] Sloman amplifies this argu-
ment in forthright terms:
I am embarrassed to be writing about consciousness because my
impression is that nearly everything written about it, even by dis-
tinguished scientists and philosophers, is mostly rubbish and will
generally be seen to be rubbish at some time in the future, perhaps
two hundred years from now. [6]
Where does all this lead us in our quest for a generally acceptable def-
inition of consciousness? Rather than allowing ourselves to get bogged
down in the search, I prefer to take a pragmatic view, accepting that it
is sufficient for there to be a general consensus about what we mean by
consciousness and to assume that there is no burning need for a rigorous
definition—let us simply use the word and get on with it.
4
Can Robots Have Consciousness?
This is a highly emotive topic. In order to avoid giving too great a shock
to the sceptics amongst you I shall argue the case for the existence of
3
The memeticist Glenn Grant defines a meme-complex (also called a memeplex) as “A set of
mutually-assisting memes which have co-evolved a symbiotic relationship. Religious and political
dogmas, social movements, artistic styles, traditions and customs, chain letters, paradigms, lan-
guages, etc. are meme-complexes.”
4
For those readers who find this lack of rigour unsatisfactory I suggest the adoption, as a working
definition, of the one given by
www.dictionary.com
: “Having an awareness of one's environment and
one's own existence, sensations and thoughts.” This definition is a perfectly adequate foundation for
the present chapter.
