Can machines even be conscious?(crackedbeefcake.com) |
Can machines even be conscious?(crackedbeefcake.com) |
What if everything has consciousness already? As in panpsychism. In such case, we are not gods - therefore yes.
Axiom one
We cannot disprove solipsism. Consciousness is the subjective self. Our qualia are the only thing we get at face value — everything else is inference, and every inference arrives filtered through those same qualia.
We cannot root the explanation in the thing doing the explaining. Kierkegaard was right: truth is subjectivity — and subjectivity is a cage. Each of us locked in with the one certainty that cannot be exported.
Consciousness is a domain where proof cannot exist - only testimony.
Axiom two
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A general epistemic norm — the wilder the assertion, the heavier the burden of proof.
Synthesis
“AI is conscious” collides the two: it’s a maximally extraordinary claim asserted inside a zero-evidence domain. The burden is infinite, the payable amount is zero. The claim of machine consciousness is an epistemological non sequitur.
Every statement anyone will ever make about machine minds — about any mind but their own — is belief. We believe in each other’s consciousness, but it is only ever belief and can never be knowledge. Knowledge would require stepping outside our own qualia, and there is no stepping outside.
Amongst the two beliefs, where do I fall? Machine consciousness implies “we created consciousness”, which is equal to saying “we are gods”, which sounds like megalomaniacal hubris to me - therefore no.