Consciousness inessentialism or ‘You don’t need to understand consciousness in order to simulate human intelligence’
Consciousness inessentialism is the belief that ‘for any intelligent activity I, performed in any cognitive domain D, even if we (’humans’) do I with conscious accompaniments, I can in principle be done without these conscious accompaniments’.
In other words, imagine that you step on a Lego. You will feel an accompanying pain as your body has a reaction and flinches away. You might even swear or curse somebody. It is probably something-like-to-be-you while you have that reaction. So the scenario is accompanied by some phenomenal properties.
No, the question consciousness inessentialism poses is: could you perform I (flinching away or cursing somebody) without the accompanying phenomenal properties? Or is this connection necessary?
Source: Young, G. (2013) ‘Philosophical Issue 1: Conscious Inessentialism’, in G. Young (ed.) Philosophical Psychopathology: Philosophy without Thought Experiments. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 11–24. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137329325_2.
Muehlhauser, L. (2017) ‘2017 Report on Consciousness and Moral Patienthood - Open Philanthropy’, Open Philanthropy, 9 June. Available at: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/2017-report-on-consciousness-and-moral-patienthood/ (Accessed: 16 February 2023).
Links: