From my observations, there are generally four camps in the machine consciousness discussion:
1. People who haven't really thought about it, and assume they're conscious because they talk like a human.
2. People who haven't really thought about it, and assume they can't be conscious because humans are obviously somehow special. This appears to be the largest group, and is linked to our religiously rooted culture in which human exceptionalism is the default.
Those first two groups comprise the majority of people, and are not worth engaging with.
3. People who have thought about it, and came to the conclusion that they might be conscious, usually for computationalism/functionalism reasons. This is the group that I place myself in.
4. People who have thought about it, and came to the conclusion that they can't be conscious, usually for biological naturalist reasons. This seems to be the predominant group on Hacker News (among those who discuss it).
1. People who haven't really thought about it, and assume they're conscious because they talk like a human.
2. People who haven't really thought about it, and assume they can't be conscious because humans are obviously somehow special. This appears to be the largest group, and is linked to our religiously rooted culture in which human exceptionalism is the default.
Those first two groups comprise the majority of people, and are not worth engaging with.
3. People who have thought about it, and came to the conclusion that they might be conscious, usually for computationalism/functionalism reasons. This is the group that I place myself in.
4. People who have thought about it, and came to the conclusion that they can't be conscious, usually for biological naturalist reasons. This seems to be the predominant group on Hacker News (among those who discuss it).