Talk:Simulated consciousness

This page was previously redirecting to the artificial consciousness page, which presents philosophical arguments about the nature of consciousness in an artificial context. I am aiming that the simulated consciousness article should focus more on the engineering aspects of current and proposed robot and virtual implementations. There may be some overlap between the two topics (artificial vs simulated consciousnes), but I believe there is sufficient material, particularly in reporting researchers' efforts to produce useful simulations, for this to be a separate page. Matt Stan 09:37, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Simulated vs Synthetic
I'm also interested in drawing appropriate distinctions between simulated consciousness and synthesised consciousness. Matt Stan 09:37, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Direction of this article
In light of PSB's addition: "Artifacts exhibiting real consciousness, if that should ever be possible, would not be simulating consciousness, of course." My thesis, along, I believe, with mainstream researchers in this field, is that it will only be by making attempts to simulate consciousness that the holy grail of achieving actual machine consciousness might be done. There is, though, perhaps a semantic problem here in that simulations are only ever intended to be simulations, e.g. you don't expect a flight simulator actually to fly. Which is why perhaps the term synthetic consciousness would be better, reflecting the reality that it might be possible to achieve the required end result by different means from what is deemed natural. This, I think, is how the term synthetic is applied in drug manufacture: synthetic insulin is real insulin, but just not acquired from pigs' pancreases. Shall I switch round the main emphasis to synthetic consciousness and abandon simulated consciousness, as the latter now seems to be something of an anachronism? I think the application of Leibniz's law is particularly apt in this context. Matt Stan 07:55, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Synthetic consciousness would make me happier in that, just as you say, it does not assume that the resulting consciousness is necessarily unreal. Synthetic means put together. It does not even imply the involvement of humans! It would also allow the removal of the rider added by me to the article's 1st para. Paul Beardsell 10:59, 4 May 2004 (UTC)