• daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    It may be because of the habit.

    But when I think of how to define a consciousness and divert it from instinct or reactiveness (like stopping at a red light). I think that something that makes a conscience a conscience must be that a conscience is able to modify itself without external influence.

    A dog may be able to fully react and learn how to react with the exterior. But can it modify itself the way human brain can?

    A human being can sit alone in a room and start processing information by itself in a loop and completely change that flux of information onto something different, even changing the brain in the process.

    For this to happen I think some form of language, some form of “speak to yourself” is needed. Some way for the brain to generate an output that can be immediately be taken as input.

    At this point of course this is far more philosophical than technical. And maybe even semantics of “what is a conscience”.

    • lad@programming.dev
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      3 days ago

      A dog may be able to fully react and learn how to react with the exterior. But can it modify itself the way human brain can?

      As per current psychology’s view, yes, even if to a smaller extent. There are problems with how we define conscience, and right now with LLMs most of the arguments are usually related to the Chinese room and philosophical zombie thought experiments, imo