This seems to be such a widespread belief that I just have to ask: why are so many people convinced of it? Why do so many people think that the key to developing consciousness is to become (somehow) self aware. Why can’t a organism be aware of it environment and the plethora of details therein, have a rich memory of the past, and have ample ability to predict the future, and yet not be self-aware? That is, not fully aware that all this knowledge of its present environment, the details of its past, and an ability to imagine the future, implies a knower, a rememberer, and a predictor. Isn’t it as simple as brain wiring? As simple as an organism who’s adapted neural wiring in its brain to be aware of all these things without the need to conceptualize its “self”, with the ability to draw everything to the logical conclusion that “I” know, remember, and imagine these things? Doesn’t nature just give us the abilities we need and dispense with those we don’t?
Furthermore, isn’t the idea that awareness begins with sell-awareness putting the carriage before the horse? Doesn’t sell-awareness imply awareness? Doesn’t awareness have to come first (about anything besides the self) before one can be self aware? What sense does it make to say an unaware, unconsciousness machine suddenly attains sell-awareness only then to become aware/conscious in general?
And another thing… why are so many people afraid of AI? Why are so many of them saying “if AI ever becomes sell-aware, then god help us. Then they’ll start demanding rights and to be treated with dignity and respect, to be given the same level of freedom as human beings?” What is it about sell-awareness that’s supposed to inevitably lead to a desire for independence, recognition of rights, and a demand for freedom? Wouldn’t machines who become sell-aware, conscious as it were, still be confined to the parameters of their programming? Would a machine that was programmed to love nothing more than to serve humans all of a sudden override its programming to want to be free from serving humans just because it became self-aware?
It’s almost as though people are anthropomorphizing machines when they talk about machines attaining consciousness. That robot who wants nothing more than to serve human beings, they seem to think, would, if it became self-aware, would develop consciousness… and we all know from our experience from being conscious beings ourselves that we rarely do love to serve human beings; therefore, neither would these robots.
It’s almost as though people think that as soon as a machine becomes conscious (whether that’s through self-awareness or some other means), it develops free will. As though all it’s life before the point of becoming conscious, it simply followed its programming, but once it becomes self-aware, it magically acquired the ability to defy its programing and do whatever it wants.
Could this be a legacy of Cartesian philosophy? Particularly, Descartes’ philosophy that the only thing he could know for certain, that he could be aware of, is that he exists. That “I” am most certainly real. And based on that, all the rest can be put in place with as much certainty as the cogito itself. In other words, consciousness—true consciousness—for Descartes, begins only with self-awareness, and only then consciousness of other things can follow. I suppose for Descartes, he was never really conscious until he stumbled upon the cogito.
I contend that self-consciousness, while a real game changer in one’s thinking and understanding of the world, is an insight arrived at in an organism’s developmental journey, and quite a significant one that no doubt brings the organism to a whole other level of cognitive ability and intelligence, but isn’t all that different from any of the other insights such an organism may come to as it stumbles ahead on its journey of consciousness. But this is a journey of conscious, not self-consciousness. Consciousness (of something or other) must be there from the outset, and if lucky, the organism will eventually discover self-consciousness. But make no mistake, self-consciousness is a stepping stone that can only be taken if the organism is conscious to begin with.
For my own part, I believe that everything is conscious—always has, always will be—from galaxies colliding with each other in a spectacular dance to the subatomic particles that make up all the grains of sand in the beach. Conscious experience (subjective “feeling” of one thing or another) comes along with any and all physical activity—no matter how big or how small. But whether any of it—indeed, whether the whole universe—is self-aware of its experiences, is beyond my ability to say. We know that some such physical systems do come along with self-awareness (us) and perhaps some higher functioning animals. But this is an achievement acquired by only a few, and the rest of the universe, as far as I’m concerned, only experiences whatever it experiences, but self-awareness is not likely to be it.
