> Let us say that we have a computer system so complicated that it is capable of mimicking a human being with perfect accuracy. You would probably say that that computer is not a being that has consciousness, because it is merely doing calculations to replicate behavior.
I have no problem considering such a system conscious and intelligent. What's the difficulty exactly?
> Problem is, you could easily say the same about any given human being. There is, quite literally, no way to tell the difference through objective measurement.
Exactly, which means there is no difference.
Consciousness will turn out to be a functional process, which means any system with the same structure will exhibit consciousness. This would be an objective measurement.
Then how can you make a statement to the effect that we may one day know how to measure consciousness, which you have just agreed is fundamentally unmeasurable?
It's just a question of definition. Instead of "consciousness" being unmeasurable, the word would get redefined to something that can be measured, like a particular volume and/or type of calculation.
If that happens it will be in good company; at one point people thought that temperature and heat, for example, were fundamentally subjective and not measurable.
Looks like you added a line to clarify, or I missed it on first reading:
> Consciousness will turn out to be a functional process
Here's where I disagree. In order to know what kind of physical structure produces consciousness, you need to know what consciousness is, and we have no way of doing that. You can define some arbitrary criteria, say, having the ability to make metatools, but that is meaningless in this context, "conscious" will just be another word for "can make metatools".
In an effort to clarify, let me ask you this: why do you care what is and is not conscious?
> In order to know what kind of physical structure produces consciousness, you need to know what consciousness is, and we have no way of doing that.
I don't see how this is different than any other empirical fact we didn't know before we started exploring the world. In what way could we properly characterize fire, or stars, or bacteria before we had any conception of such things? Yet, I don't think anyone sensible would disagree that we largely understand these concepts now.
Similarly, consciousness is an amalgamation of different information processes that we have yet to disentangle, and all we have is a catch-all term "consciousness" to describe our ignorance.
> In an effort to clarify, let me ask you this: why do you care what is and is not conscious?
> I don't see how this is different than any other empirical fact we didn't know before we started exploring the world.
We didn't know that bacteria existed, but we knew what disease was. Once we had the concept of bacteria, showing it to be related to disease was a matter of testing. How do you test if something has a consciousness? I know that consciousness exists because I experience it, but for all I know you don't, and I have no way of knowing any different because experiences are, by definition, subjective.
You've probably seen this old XKCD about color [1]. It's like that. We can both perceive a wavelength of light and have labeled it "blue" for the purposes of communication, but we cannot possibly know eachother's experience of it. The very question is meaningless in an empirical model of reality.
> Similarly, consciousness is an amalgamation of different information processes that we have yet to disentangle, and all we have is a catch-all term "consciousness" to describe our ignorance.
I disagree. You describe what I would call "mind". The kind of consciousness I'm talking about could be described as "the experience of being". We all know what it is, but we get our communication about it confused with concepts like intelligence, mind, and complexity. I suspect this is because we grew up with a scientific worldview and have difficulty allowing ourselves to believe something non-objective can exist, so we entangle it with concepts that are objective to force it into our model of reality.
> I care about anything that is not yet explained.
Ok, fair enough. I asked because this sort of discussion usually takes place in the context of people having already come to the conclusion that human beings (and maybe some animals) are special and trying desperately to find a line of reasoning that allows for them being conscious, but not computers or plants or other such things. Some of my earlier arguments presumed this context and that may have been a source of mutual confusion.
I have no problem considering such a system conscious and intelligent. What's the difficulty exactly?
> Problem is, you could easily say the same about any given human being. There is, quite literally, no way to tell the difference through objective measurement.
Exactly, which means there is no difference.
Consciousness will turn out to be a functional process, which means any system with the same structure will exhibit consciousness. This would be an objective measurement.