Robotic Nation Evidence

Don't you mean Conscience? (Sense of "right" and "wrong"?)

Consciousness would be if the plane were to be having an experience, not just computing. Chalmers territory, and the like.

-- Lion
 

Perhaps conscience can only come from consciousness. The ability to resolve your own self as distinct from your surroundings may be the ultimate arbiter of what you find right and wrong.
 

Hm... I believe my computer sees itself as distinct from it's surroundings.

For example, if it sees a message addressed to 127.0.0.1, the computers way of thinking "I," it will just give itself its own message, and not try to send it out. If it sees a message addressed to a computer with a different IP address than it's own, then it will send the message over ethernet or the wireless.

So, it seems that my computer meets the condition of seeing itself as distinct from it's surroundings.

But I would not say that it is conscious, nor would I say that it has a conscience.

I would personally reserve the term "conscience" for an AI that was able to converse, that would try to persuade someone that an act was right or wrong (of it's own volition,) and that could be persuaded that an act was right or wrong (which it must be willing to hear out, in some situations.)

Consciousness, on the other hand, seems to me altogether different.

I would personally trust that an artificial intelligence were conscious, if it met the following conditions: (1) It was not programmed, directly or indirectly, to say that it was conscious. (2) It nonetheless insisted that it was conscious. (3) It had the same difficulty telling what consciousness was, that a human has. OR: The artificial intelligence was structured very similarly to another that met those three conditions.

I can imagine an AI that has conscience without consciousness, and I can image an AI that is conscious, but does not exibit conscience.

-- Lion