* Van Ly via Emacs news and miscellaneous discussions outside the scope of
other Emacs mailing lists <emacs-tangents@gnu.org> [2025-03-31 14:55]:
> Is consciousness fundamental or inevitable? Where do you stand?
Consciousness as alert cognitive state in which you are aware of
yourself and your situation is obviously neither fundamental nor
inevitable. Just turn around yourself, and you can see people walking
like zombies or making wars, thinking how to kill other people.
Computer can't be never aware of itself, it can mimic the awareness
and mimic the survival urges for human to anthropomorphize it.
Consciousness is quality only akin to the being, which is you. If you
think of yourself as only a body, so be it, and if you think of
yourself as spiritual being, so it is the same. You may be or not be
conscious.
It is not inevitable.
It is not necessarily fundamental.
Though maybe you think of consciousness in some other definition.
> Suppose, a synthetic consciousness mind machine is instantiated and
> has done the thing and the switch is turned off.
We never perish.
(defun discuss-consciousness (standpoint)
"Simulate a discussion about consciousness with Van Ly.
STANDPOINT should be a string representing the position on whether
consciousness is fundamental or inevitable."
(interactive "sWhere do you stand on consciousness
(fundamental/inevitable/other)? ")
(let ((responses '(("fundamental" . "Consciousness is not necessarily
fundamental.")
("inevitable" . "Consciousness is not inevitable.")
("other" . "You may have a different definition of
consciousness.")
)))
(let ((response (cdr (assoc standpoint responses))))
(if response
(message "%s" response)
(message "Is consciousness fundamental or inevitable? Where do you
stand?")))
(when (or (string-equal standpoint "fundamental")
(string-equal standpoint "inevitable")
(string-equal standpoint "other"))
(message "Consciousness as an alert cognitive state is neither
fundamental nor inevitable. "
"It is akin to the being, which is you. You may be or not be
conscious.")
(message "Computer can't be never aware of itself, it can mimic awareness
and survival urges."))
(when (or (string-equal standpoint "fundamental")
(string-equal standpoint "other"))
(message "Suppose a synthetic consciousness mind machine is instantiated
and the switch is turned off. "
"We never perish. Though if you are conscious about that or not,
that is your decision."))))
(discuss-consciousness "other")
--
Jean Louis
---
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