PS263 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Cogito Ergo Sum, Turing Test, Qualia
Document Summary
Consciousness: lots of questions; few (or no?) answers. Much of the debate is philosophical, not biological. Trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks william james. Descartes suggested that only internal subjective experience is direct; everything else is inferred: we know that we are conscious, we infer that others are also conscious. What is consciousness: we all recognize the subjective experience of consciousness. Who is conscious: we assume that beings that behave as we do when conscious are also conscious. Do animals that solve similar tasks to us use consciousness to do it: we can ask people if they are conscious of something. Requires language: excludes babies, brain-damaged patients, animals . What does consciousness do: we (and animals) can do a lot of things without consciousness. Anything robots can do: drive, answer questions, play chess . Parietal cortex activates before we are aware of having decided on an action.
