To paraphrase Jean Luc Picard: Am I conscious? Why? Can you prove that I am conscious?

Maybe Jean Luc Picard should've lost that court case. Obviously we as the audience want to have our heroes win against some super callous guy who wants to kill our hero (and audience stand in for anyone who is neurodivergent) Data, but the argument was pretty weak, because Data often acted in completely alien ways that jeopardized the safety of the crew, and the way that those issues came up was due to him doing things that were not compatible with what we perceive as consciousness. But also, in that episode, they make a point of trying to prove that he was conscious by showing that he engaged in behavior that wasn't goal oriented, like keeping keepsakes and mementos of his friends, his previous relationship with Tasha, and his relationship with his cat. That was an attempt at proving that he was conscious too, but the argument from doubt is tough because how can you prove that a rock is not conscious - and if that can't be proved, should we elevate human rights to a rock?

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bena 2 days ago | parent [-]

First of all, Data never willingly jeopardized the crew.

Second, they work alongside actual aliens. Being different is not a disqualification. And Maddox isn't callous, he just doesn't regard Data as anything more than "just a machine". A position he eventually changes over the series as he becomes one of Data's friends.

Data is also not a stand in for the neurodivergent. He's the flip of Spock. Spock asks us what if we tried to approach every question from a place of pure logic and repressed all emotion. Data asks us what if we didn't have the option, that we had to approach everything from logic and couldn't even feel emotion. I also feel that equating data to someone who is neurodivergent is kind of insulting as neurodivergent people do have feelings and emotions.

But Data was capable of being fully autonomous and could act with agency. Something a rock can't. Data exhibits characteristics we generally accept as conscious. He is not only capable of accessing a large corpus of knowledge, but he is capable of building upon that corpus and generate new information.

Ultimately, we cannot prove a rock is not conscious. But, as far as we are able to discern, a rock cannot express a desire. That's the difference. Data expressed a desire. The case was whether or not Starfleet had to respect that desire.

	▲	Edman274 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> First of all, Data never willingly jeopardized the crew. This presupposes that he has consciousness. He can only "willingly" do things if he is conscious. If the argument is that there was an external influence that changed his behavior thus making it not volitional then you have to distinguish why the external force makes his Lore behavior unwilling, but Soong's initial programming willing. If I set a thermostat to 85 degrees, would you say that the thermostat is "unwillingly" making people uncomfortable, but at the factory default of 70 degrees, it's helping people feel comfortable? It's difficult to distinguish what is willing and unwilling if consciousness is in question so this feels like begging the question. > I also feel that equating data to someone who is neurodivergent is kind of insulting as neurodivergent people do have feelings and emotions. I'm stating it as an aside / justification for why we want the story to go a certain direction because I see so many articles elevating Data as a heroic representation of neurodivergence. My goal wasntt to be offensive. There are a ton of episodes where Data is puzzled by people's behavior and then someone has to explain it to him almost as if someone is also explaining to the audience it as a morality tale. Remember when Data was struggling to understand how he was lied to? Or how he lost in that strategy game? Or how to be funny? We don't just see him struggle, someone explains to him exactly how he should learn from his experience. That appears to be for the benefit of the android and the people behind the fourth wall. > A rock cannot express a desire. It can if you carve a rock into the words "I want to live" and even though the rock didn't configure itself that way, it's expressing a desire. Noonien Soong built Data, so it's possible that he designed Data to state the desire to be human. Data does seem to have an interiority but he also seems to not have it based on the caprice of outside forces, which is problematic because the way that he is controlled is not very different from the way he is built. On the Data question I'm not saying that Maddox should've won but that the fact that Picard won is more about it being narratively required rather than "prove that I am conscious" being a good argument.

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beeflet 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

consciousness is the feeling of self awareness. I suppose you could prove it as much as any other feeling, by observing the way that people behave

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selcuka 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I suppose you could prove it as much as any other feeling, by observing the way that people behave

Look up the term "philosophical zombie".

In a nutshell, you can simulate a conscious being using a non-conscious (zombie) being. It is possible to simulate it so well that an outside observer can't tell the difference. If this is true, then the corollary is that you can't really know if other people are conscious. You can only tell that you are.

For all intents and purposes I might be the only one who has consciousness in the universe, and I can't prove otherwise.

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zeroonetwothree 3 days ago | parent [-]

I don't think you are using the phrase "it is possible" correctly. There's certainly no evidence that a philosophical zombie is "possible". I think there are strong arguments that it's not possible.

	▲	selcuka 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Well, I could have been clearer, but it was a proposition, hence the "If this is true" in the following sentence. That being said, I don't think those counter arguments really invalidate the philosophical zombie thought experiment. Let's say that it is not possible to simulate a conscious being with 100% accuracy. Does the difference really matter? Does a living organism need consciousness as an evolutionary advantage? Isn't it reasonable to assume that all human beings are conscious just because they all pass the Turing test, even if they are not?

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inglor_cz 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A robot can certainly be programmed to behave in a self-aware way, but making a conclusion about its actual self-awareness would be unfounded.

In general, behaviorism wasn't a very productive theory in humans and animals either.

	▲	beeflet 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		By behaving in a self-aware way, it practices self awareness. It would only be unfounded if the robot is programmed in a way that seemingly appears to be self-aware but actually isn't (It would need to occasionally act in a non-self aware way, like a manchurian candidate). But if you keep increasing scrutiny, it converges on being self aware because the best way to appear self-aware is to be self-aware. It's not clear to me what the intrinsic goals of a robot would be if it did practice self-awareness in the first place. But in living things it's to grow and reproduce.