> We lack a theory of consciousness [...]

Nitpick: off course we don't really lack a theory of consciousness. It's just that Alan Turing choose to ignore all the existing prior discourse in humanities and philosophy.

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tim333 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Nitpick nitpick: If you look at Turing's paper https://courses.cs.umbc.edu/471/papers/turing.pdf and ^F for consciousness you'll find that's not entirely true.

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pmontra 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There are many theories of consciousness but nobody knows if one of them is correct and nobody can use one of them to build a conscious machine. Compare that to theories of physics. None of them is 100% correct but they give us the tools we are using to write these messages.

	▲	tim333 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I've got a theory of consciousness, not a very complicated one, that could be used in a machine. Basically that it evolved as a practical way for animals to make decisions like whether to run from a predator. To do that info from the billions of neurons handling senses memories and the like filter down to something like a situation summary, which is basically what the animal is conscious of which then feeds to the decision making, thinking and remembering and neurons. It would be quite interesting if/when someone tries that to see how close it is or isn't to nature.