Cats and consciousness

[green_amber]

Someone suggested I upfront this comment as a post so here we go:

Oddly, consciousness is the other thing I was noodling about at the weekend. My cats are so obviously conscious, and in really quite subtle ways I never imagined before I lived with animals. They are disappointed, happy, enticing, vain, frustrated, envious and irritated. Yet they have brains like peas no? How stupid do you have to get before consciousness vanishes? Do bees have consciousness? Do goldfish? Do rats? Do all human beings who are not in comas? Do babies, and if so from what age? Is having consciousness the same as thinking? (DO babies think? They dream don't they - is that the same either? My cats dream.)

And where consciousness exists continues to mystify me. Anyone who's studied the Turing test realises that intelligence as an externally observed factor is not the same as intentionality. WE can simulate intelligence but we can't simulate consciousness. Does this indicate there is some kind of mind/brain dualism actually going on?

Comments

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

You mean to deliberately conceal its nature, right?

[andrewducker]

English needs brackets.

any AI capable of passing a Turing Test would be (intelligent enough to deliberately fail) to conceal its nature.

not

any AI capable of passing a Turing Test would be intelligent enough to (deliberately fail to conceal its nature).

[del-c.livejournal.com]

English is okay, it just needs its speakers to stop verbifying nouns, nouning verbs, and transiting the intransitive. In this case there any number of fixes, including pigeonhed's suggestion of a comma. I would suggest a bit of harmless repetition: say "the test" again, and the problem goes away.

Any AI capable of passing a Turing Test would be intelligent enough to deliberately fail the test to conceal its nature.

[andrewducker]

Except you could still read that as "deliberately fail (the test to conceal its nature)"

I'd go for replacing "to" with "in order to".

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

Yes, should be a comma after fail.

To deliberately fail in order to conceal its nature.