to fully know itself

Will robots become sentient? Does artificial intelligence (AI) imply that machines will develop consciousness like humans? To answer such questions we need to examine what we mean by consciousness. This blog supports a spiritual view that regards consciousness as a formless absolute that both transcends and permeates everything perceived as having material form. Materialists have a different view that admits to some difficulty.

According to the Oxford Guide to the Mind: “When physical structures like brains generate mental processes like perceiving, remembering and thinking, we have some explaining to do. But the articial brains of desktop computers can perform these kinds of activities, and the only problem that this presents is the similarity between human intelligence and artificial intelligence... They are simulations, of course, but they are the equivalent of activities that we know as mental processes.” (1)

This completely avoids the question of sentience. Where does conscious awareness come from in their view of the world? Materialists think it is the product of evolution. That it arises as a by-product of the complexity of the human organism. That it has its origins in “a mixture of lifeless atoms subject to blind and purposeless forces” according to Paul Davies in the Origins of Life (2). So, lifeless atoms give rise to sentient life. This doesn't even pass the test of linguistic logic. But it follows that, for them, the creation of machines that mimic our internal circuitry will be similarly self-aware.

Their confusion is due to a mixing of two things. The functioning of the brain and body is one thing, sentient self-awareness (consciousness) is another. Although the material world forms into its component parts, according to our spiritual analysis, it does so within the formless conscious absolute. So, in this view everything in the world is conscious, but that doesn't mean it is self-aware in the way a human organism is. 

In our spiritual view, material form evolves into its complex bological structures to reveal its underlying nature. It is what drives the process. Humans have reached that point in evolution when the underlying formless consciousness emerges to fully know itself. Robots have not undergone any such thing, and will remain at the level of their non-biological circuitry and structure.

1) Oxford Guide to the Mind, Oxford University Press, ed Geoffrey Underwood

2) The Origin of Life, Penguin, Paul Davies 

pic from here