Consciousness in human and robot minds

The main concern of this chapter is to determine whether consciousness in robots is possible. Several reasons are illustrated why conscious robots are deemed impossible, namely: robots are purely material things, and consciousness requires immaterial mind-stuff; robots are inorganic (by definition), and consciousness can exist only in an organic brain; robots are artefacts, and consciousness abhors an artefact because only something natural, born and not manufactured, could exhibit genuine consciousness; and robots will always be much too simple to be conscious. These assumptions are considered unreasonable and inadequate by the author, thus, counter-arguments on each assumption are given. The author contends that it is more interesting to explore if a robot that is theoretically interesting, independent of the philosophical conundrum about whether it is conscious, is formable. The Cog project on a humanoid robot is, thus, comprehensively presented and examined in this chapter.

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198524144.003.0002 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198524144.003.0002