TITLE: From Artificial Intelligence to Artificial Consciousness?
SPEAKER:  Dan Ghica (The University of Birmingham)

ABSTRACT:

The question of consciousness has preoccupied philosophers for a long time, and it is highly relevant for cognitive science and artificial intelligence. This talk will focus on one of the common materialist views of consciousness, Dennett’s heterophenomenology. In it, consciousness is seen, in broad terms, as a computational and emergent property of the brain. This is in contrast with the view of other philosophers, most prominently Searle, who consider consciousness to be a physiological property of the human brain. In this talk we will examine some of the immediate consequences of Dennett’s thesis from the point of view of elementary automata theory and consider whether they strengthen or weaken it.