"Conscious Machines: Memory, Melody and Imagination"

by Susan A.J. Stewart

At first glance the question, ''Will conscious machines perform better than 'unconscious' machines?'', seems innocuous or, at least, to elicit a straightforward positive response, but it prompts the question, ''Perform what?''. If the aim is to produce a machine that will perform as a human being or other phenomenally conscious agent in an intersubjectively-demanding social and moral environment, then there can be little doubt that a conscious machine would out-perform an `unconscious' machine. But there are also circumstances in which a conscious, empathetic, decision-making, risk-taking agent would be a distinct disadvantage, and I will allude to circumstances of this kind briefly towards the end of the paper.

Following on from Damasio's [1991, 1994, 1999, 2003] claims for the necessity of pre-reflective conscious, emotional, bodily responses for the development of an organism's core and extended consciousness, I will argue that without these capacities any agent would be significantly less likely to make effective decisions and survive. Moreover, I will argue that machine phenomenology is only possible within a distributed system that possesses a subtle musculature and a nervous system such that it can, through action and repetition, develop its kinaesthetic memory, individual kinaesthetic melodies, and an enactive kinaesthetic imagination. Without these capacities a potentially conscious machine would remain unconscious. It would be without the necessary nuanced somatosensory awareness of its active engagement, even if that action is to some extent goal-directed, and would be incapable of developing the sorts of somatic markers or saliency tags that enable affective reactions, and which are indispensable for effective decision-making.

Available here.

Accepted for presentation at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Washington, VA., 7-11 November 2007, and to appear in the Proceedings of FSS-07: AI and Consciousness: Theoretical Foundations and Current Approaches.