[ExI] Pope Leo and A

[John Clark]

On Thu, Jun 11, 2026 at 5:45 PM 'William Arnett' via Inventor's Lunch <invento...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

>I am NOT anthropomorphizing.

Why not? Perhaps you should do a little anthropomorphizing because if used intelligently anthropomorphizing can be a very useful tool. If something behaves like me then maybe it feels like me too, that's the only reason I believe my fellow human beings are probably just as conscious as I am. 

 

> I am asking questions about what it is that we value so much in humanity and whether we are necessarily unique in that regard. There have long been simple answers: We are made in the image of God. Might makes right. We are the pinnacle of evolution... All bullshit.

I agree.  

 

> I’m hoping (not asserting) that we can develop some better answers from building and studying AIs.

You're never going to get an axiomatic system of ethics that contains no contradictions and covers every eventuality, thanks to Kurt Godel we know that would be impossible even for something as uncontroversial as arithmetic.  

>Years ago, many people thought that the Turning Test was a sufficient condition for moral worth. That is no longer a widely held opinion

That was believed back when most thought a computer would never be able to pass the Turing Test, but now when computers can pass that test with flying colors many have changed their mind, but I have not. However I don't think it's important if humans believe intelligent computers deserve moral consideration or not, of much more practical importance is whether computers think humans deserve moral consideration. 

 > even if they are true, there’s no reason to believe the biological evolution is so special that the kind of evolution that produces LLMs might not also create those qualities.

There is no way random mutation and natural selection could have produced consciousness unless consciousness was the inevitable byproduct of intelligent behavior. It must be a brute fact that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently. 

 John K Clark  

[Brent Meeker]

These discussions get muddled because they implicitly assume "consciousness" is a single, well defined attribute.  But biological evolution makes it clear that consciousness originates as simple distinguishing self from not-self in single celled organisms.  The human consciousness comes in several levels, including that primitive self/not-self.  The level you seem to consider mysterious and a brute fact, in which one is conscious of one self as an actor in the world and in imagined scenarios of considered action, is a product of imagination and language.  To be able to think of yourself in various possible situations is an obvious evolutionary advantage.  And notice that most of the time you are not thinking of yourself in this way.  As I'm typing this I'm just thinking of typing and I'm no more self conscious than my dog is.  Many things I do well I do unconsciously or "subconsciously", i.e. walk, run, play tennis, ride a bicycle...  And even intellectual things like finding a mathematical proof, as described by Poincare' may be mostly unconscious.  That's processing data intelligently with no feeling at all.

Brent

[John Clark]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2026 at 3:05 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

> These discussions get muddled because they implicitly assume "consciousness" is a single, well defined attribute.  But biological evolution makes it clear that consciousness originates as simple distinguishing self from not-self in single celled organisms.  The human consciousness comes in several levels, including that primitive self/not-self.  The level you seem to consider mysterious and a brute fact, in which one is conscious of one self as an actor in the world and in imagined scenarios of considered action, is a product of imagination and language.  To be able to think of yourself in various possible situations is an obvious evolutionary advantage.  And notice that most of the time you are not thinking of yourself in this way.  As I'm typing this I'm just thinking of typing and I'm no more self conscious than my dog is.  Many things I do well I do unconsciously or "subconsciously", i.e. walk, run, play tennis, ride a bicycle...  And even intellectual things like finding a mathematical proof, as described by Poincare' may be mostly unconscious.  That's processing data intelligently with no feeling at all.

The above could be summarized in the following way; whatever you mean by the word, if you are comfortable in saying "human beings are conscious" then you should also be comfortable in saying "Intelligent computers are conscious". 

John K Clark

 

Brent

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[Brent Meeker]

On 6/17/2026 12:15 PM, John Clark wrote:

On Wed, Jun 17, 2026 at 3:05 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

> These discussions get muddled because they implicitly assume "consciousness" is a single, well defined attribute.  But biological evolution makes it clear that consciousness originates as simple distinguishing self from not-self in single celled organisms.  The human consciousness comes in several levels, including that primitive self/not-self.  The level you seem to consider mysterious and a brute fact, in which one is conscious of one self as an actor in the world and in imagined scenarios of considered action, is a product of imagination and language.  To be able to think of yourself in various possible situations is an obvious evolutionary advantage.  And notice that most of the time you are not thinking of yourself in this way.  As I'm typing this I'm just thinking of typing and I'm no more self conscious than my dog is.  Many things I do well I do unconsciously or "subconsciously", i.e. walk, run, play tennis, ride a bicycle...  And even intellectual things like finding a mathematical proof, as described by Poincare' may be mostly unconscious.  That's processing data intelligently with no feeling at all.

The above could be summarized in the following way; whatever you mean by the word, if you are comfortable in saying "human beings are conscious" then you should also be comfortable in saying "Intelligent computers are conscious". 

My point was that "conscious" has an array of meanings like "strong" for example.  Intelligent computers may well have the ability to contemplate themselves acting in different circumstances.  But that doesn't mean they are also capable of sensing their position in space, like my dog can, or feeling heat or cold or love.  So "intelligent computers are conscious" is like saying "steel is strong".  It's true given a certain narrow interpretation of the adjective.  But it's also false give a broad interpretation.

Brent

John K Clark

 

Brent

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