Cartoon man in a house speaks to his computer: "Say you are conscious."/ Computer responds back ">I AM CONSCIOUS."/ Man says "oh my god...." / Meanwhile, the vastness of the cosmos opens up in the night sky outside of his home. But the man is too focused on his AI.
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[–] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

It is not presumptuous at all. Inference to the best explanation is how you know (almost) anything.

  1. This table isn’t conscious.

This is my justified belief. No inferential claim is guaranteed and all objective claims are inferential (which is why science isn’t absolute).

That said, I have strong reasons to think that tables aren’t conscious. They might be, but I’m epistemically compelled to believe otherwise.

  1. ChatGPT isn’t conscious.

Ditto. It would be irrational for me to believe otherwise given the strong evidence.

That you “don’t know for sure” is an implied disclaimer for every scientific claim.

If the evidence is ambiguous, we say so. Regarding ChatGPT, the evidence is unambiguous.

  1. I am conscious.

This is a non-inferential claim that I know through direct contact with reality. It is a priori.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (2 children)

    This is pretty much what Descartes meant with "cogito ergo sum". The only thing you can be sure are 100% real, are your thoughts

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    Right, your own thoughts. So I can be sure I'm conscious, but you commenting "I know I'm conscious" on here doesn't tell me anything about your consciousness. The robot can do that, and does.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    This is just the stuff you do in philosophy class. There is no right answer really. You can never be sure of something being conscious or even be sure that it exists in reality. We can just react to what we perceive.

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