I think you're making a mistake here. The mistake is to think that something/someone could very convincingly _seem_ to be conscious but somehow not actually be conscious. I would argue that, beyond a certain point, there is no difference.
The Turing Test is a good tool to roll out in these sorts of arguments. People often mention the Turing Test, but have you ever stopped to think how good a conversation would need to be to _convincingly_ pass it?
Dennett gives an imaginary example of a Turing Test conversation in his book Consciousness Explained:
Judge: Did you hear about the Irishman who found a magic lamp? When he rubbed it a genie appeared and granted him three wishes. “I’ll have a pint of Guiness!” the Irishman replied and immediately it appeared. The Irishman eagerly set to sipping and then gulping, but the level of Guiness in the glass was always magically restored. After a while the genie became impatient. “Well, what about your second wish?” he asked. Replied the Irishman between gulps, “Oh well, I guess I’ll have another one of these.”
CHINESE ROOM: Very funny. No, I hadn’t heard it– but you know I find ethnic jokes in bad taste. I laughed in spite of myself, but really, I think you should find other topics for us to discuss.
J: Fair enough but I told you the joke because I want you to explain it to me.
CR: Boring! You should never explain jokes.
J: Nevertheless, this is my test question. Can you explain to me how and why the joke “works”?
CR: If you insist. You see, it depends on the assumption that the magically refilling glass will go on refilling forever, so the Irishman has all the stout he can ever drink. So he hardly has a reason for wanting a duplicate but he is so stupid (that’s the part I object to) or so besotted by the alcohol that he doesn’t recognize this, and so, unthinkingly endorsing his delight with his first wish come true, he asks for seconds. These background assumptions aren’t true, of course, but just part of the ambient lore of joke-telling, in which we suspend our disbelief in magic and so forth. By the way we could imagine a somewhat labored continuation in which the Irishman turned out to be “right” in his second wish after all, perhaps he’s planning to throw a big party and one glass won’t refill fast enough to satisfy all his thirsty guests (and it’s no use saving it up in advance– we all know how stale stout loses its taste). We tend not to think of such complications which is part of the explanation of why jokes work. Is that enough?
Dennett goes on to say:
"The fact is that any program that could actually hold up its end in the conversation depicted would have to be an extraordinary supple, sophisticated, and multilayered system, brimming with “world knowledge” and meta-knowledge and meta-meta-knowledge about its own responses, the likely responses of its interlocutor, and much, much more…. Maybe the billions of actions of all those highly structured parts produce genuine understanding in the system after all."
The joke isn't funny because the irishman is stupid. The joke is funny because the irishman holds Guinness as his highest value.
That puppet can't tell you how to behave in life. Unless it is embodied in a human body that is relevant to the speaker and has a life context that is similar (requiring to eat, sleep, ect). The physical actions of the mind required to have a conversation are only part of our greater identity and awareness of ourselves in the world.
The puppet's existence in the world would be meaningless, though very intelligent. Why is there a puppet that can talk? What is it's purpose? Only a conscious being can answer that. The irishman's joke is funny because he chose Guinness as his reason to live, his highest value, his god, his philosophy.
Love that story, thanks! Ok, now a serious response. You come administer a Turing Test (in sign language) to a puppet which I'm controlling with some strings which you can't see. Using puppetry, I help the puppet pass the test. Is the puppet conscious?
Is your hand conscious? Are you your hand? Am I reasonable to assume that your hand typed your comment? So how can I be sure that you are conscious and not just your hands and mouth?
I can, because those are merely the mechanisms you use to communicate. If you choose to communicate via puppet, that's still you communicating, and the puppet is not conscious. Now, if you can make a puppet that passes the test, and I mean really passes, like the example above, where there can be questions and meta questions, and no running from some topics, without you having to interfere at all during the tests, then you might have a conscious puppet after all.
Well, maybe it would produce a hurricane on the other side of the globe.
If I told a time traveling Newton how I’m replying to this on my phone, he might conclude the phone is conscious.
I think the only thing we discover with this line of reasoning is that humans tend to ascribe consciousness to complex behavior.
This could be because complex behavior implies consciousness, but that’s generous. Humans have probably just been programmed to ascribe because it’s a good heuristic esp. in the Paleolithic world.
What good is my imagination as a tool for measuring consciousness?
Years ago I’d have a hard time imagining RESnet.
I see what you’re going for, if I really try to imagine it my brain starts ascribing consciousness to it. But that’s my point. I ascribe it due to intutition, not reason. Nothing about my intuition gives me a solid argument for why your bot must be conscious, it only evokes an intuitive feel that it would be.
What I'm going for ultimately here is the idea that consciousness is an emergent property when a system is complex enough and has meta-knowledge about itself and so on. I mean, I get its a stretch. But duality and panpsychism are also a stretch.
Ian M Banks said it well:
... Certainly there are arguments against the possibility of Artificial Intelligence, but they tend to boil down to one of three assertions: one, that there is some vital field or other presently intangible influence exclusive to biological life - perhaps even carbon-based biological life - which may eventually fall within the remit of scientific understanding but which cannot be emulated in any other form (all of which is neither impossible nor likely); two, that self-awareness resides in a supernatural soul - presumably linked to a broad-based occult system involving gods or a god, reincarnation or whatever - and which one assumes can never be understood scientifically (equally improbable, though I do write as an atheist); and, three, that matter cannot become self-aware (or more precisely that it cannot support any informational formulation which might be said to be self-aware or taken together with its material substrate exhibit the signs of self-awareness). ...I leave all the more than nominally self-aware readers to spot the logical problem with that argument.
I like to think there are a few ways it could be, and try to be comfortable with not knowing which one it is e g
-emergent property
-solipsism
-panpsychism
Its a huge mystery thats sitting there right infront of and behind our eyes every minute of the day. I'm comfortable with not knowing the answer but I'm also fascinated by it all and I like to debate. Particularly as a displacement activity when I really need to be doing something else.
The Turing Test is a good tool to roll out in these sorts of arguments. People often mention the Turing Test, but have you ever stopped to think how good a conversation would need to be to _convincingly_ pass it?
Dennett gives an imaginary example of a Turing Test conversation in his book Consciousness Explained:
Judge: Did you hear about the Irishman who found a magic lamp? When he rubbed it a genie appeared and granted him three wishes. “I’ll have a pint of Guiness!” the Irishman replied and immediately it appeared. The Irishman eagerly set to sipping and then gulping, but the level of Guiness in the glass was always magically restored. After a while the genie became impatient. “Well, what about your second wish?” he asked. Replied the Irishman between gulps, “Oh well, I guess I’ll have another one of these.”
CHINESE ROOM: Very funny. No, I hadn’t heard it– but you know I find ethnic jokes in bad taste. I laughed in spite of myself, but really, I think you should find other topics for us to discuss.
J: Fair enough but I told you the joke because I want you to explain it to me.
CR: Boring! You should never explain jokes.
J: Nevertheless, this is my test question. Can you explain to me how and why the joke “works”?
CR: If you insist. You see, it depends on the assumption that the magically refilling glass will go on refilling forever, so the Irishman has all the stout he can ever drink. So he hardly has a reason for wanting a duplicate but he is so stupid (that’s the part I object to) or so besotted by the alcohol that he doesn’t recognize this, and so, unthinkingly endorsing his delight with his first wish come true, he asks for seconds. These background assumptions aren’t true, of course, but just part of the ambient lore of joke-telling, in which we suspend our disbelief in magic and so forth. By the way we could imagine a somewhat labored continuation in which the Irishman turned out to be “right” in his second wish after all, perhaps he’s planning to throw a big party and one glass won’t refill fast enough to satisfy all his thirsty guests (and it’s no use saving it up in advance– we all know how stale stout loses its taste). We tend not to think of such complications which is part of the explanation of why jokes work. Is that enough?
Dennett goes on to say:
"The fact is that any program that could actually hold up its end in the conversation depicted would have to be an extraordinary supple, sophisticated, and multilayered system, brimming with “world knowledge” and meta-knowledge and meta-meta-knowledge about its own responses, the likely responses of its interlocutor, and much, much more…. Maybe the billions of actions of all those highly structured parts produce genuine understanding in the system after all."