[FRIAM] Is consciousness measurable?

Jochen Fromm jofr at cas-group.net
Wed Oct 19 14:36:18 EDT 2022


Emotions are related to a body. I don't think they are absolutely necessary, but I think some kind of body is indeed necessary to develop a form of consciousness. A body which can move around in two different but interconnected worlds, for instance the physical or a virtual world and the world of language. The recognition of the own name can then act like a seed or spark for the conscious perception of the own body. This requires a name and a body and some kind of association between them. In chemistry a seed crystal is a small piece of crystal material from which a large crystal is grown in a lab. I think the body acts as a seed crystal for the perception of a self in consciousness and it also solves the symbol grounding problem.Therefore a checklist would be1. does it have a body?2. is it - like all animals - perceiving the world as a set of interacting bodies?3. does it have a name? 4. is it able to understand objects and actions by connecting them to their name (and accounts of events by associating it with a story) ?Then it should be able to make a connection between the own body and the own name. Large language models are fascinating, but they are not grounded in reality (the symbol grounding problem) and they don't have a body. Small kids and animals are not fully conscious because they don't understand language. To measure the degree of consciousness one could ask1. Can it recognize the own name (even pets can do this to a certain degree)2. Can it understand names in general?3. Can it read, write and speak the own name?4. Can it understand the own personality and the own personal history?-J.
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