Can robots have consciousness?
We humans have made great advancements in Artificial intelligence, Robotics and Science in general. However, science only deals with physical aspects of things, and doesn't have anything to do with the spiritual aspects.
Many humans have the opinion that besides a physical body, humans also have a soul, and that soul can't ever be replicated. They also believe that soul is important for self awareness. By self awareness, I do not only mean the ability to self recognize yourself, which is something that can also be programmed in a robot, but to really have a genuine knowledge that you are basically you, and to have emotions and feelings about yourself.
Sure, you can program a robot to develop emotions, feelings, and self recognize itself etc, just like humans. However, in my opinion, in this way, you would just have programmed the robot to be able to mimic those feelings, and not to really have them of its own. In other words, you can make a robot to exactly develop and behave like humans, but like I said, it would still be just doing a mimicry of humans, and still not have the real self awareness and consciousness that humans have.
So, basically, I think that we humans are more than just physical beings, who also have a soul. We can replicate the physical aspect of humans in a robot, but never impart a soul to it.
Your opinions about this topic are also greatly appreciated. Let them be known by commenting here.
Your argument reminds me at lot of Searle's Chinese Room Argument.
What I'm always wondering with this kind of argument is: how do you define the phenomenon that you do not attribute to a machine? In your case this would be self awareness and consciousness (in Searle's case it would be understanding).
You can claim that it is a mental processes, but especially self awareness in humans always refers to a substrate (like a body), to which it refers (as self), therefore it is never a purely mental processes, but it has a certain physical component to it. What's your vote on this?
(Yes, I'm aware that this is a rather bood question, since philosophers are arguing for centuries about how this relationship looks like)
Just read about that experiment. Very interesting!
The religions like Buddhism and Krishna talk about the soul. Maybe a soul could integrate an advancement AI being to experience a consciousness to a new level.
Nice perspective. Or we could integrate AI into humans directly to make them cyborgs (half man/half machine).
I truly concur with you, there have been great improvement in Artificial intelligence but replicating a soul, i dont think it is possible. But scienctist have tried that with the process of cloning.
Thanks for your comment. You mentioned cloning, but cloning just creates another animal, not a robot.
It's a very interesting topic, I recommend Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep where they do a lot of revelation about the reality of consciousness in the machines
Will check out that, sure. Thanks for telling.
Stunning post.
Worth Reading, i agree
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Of course they do. Let's take our remote control for example, when I was younger and I will be watching a 18+ movie, think my parents were asleep not knowing they are not. When i notice someone is coming I will try to change the channel but it won't change. When I am caught my parents will take the remote and with one click the TV wud go off lol. Since then I knew machines had a mind of theirs. Happy holiday
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One of the great restrictions of them is that we humans have higher and lower mental processes and that is where the scientists have failed and have not been able to develop it beyond the cinema.