aaimnr

That's a full-on nihilistic postmodernism. The fact that words mean something only in reference to other words doesn't have to mean that they are useless. Quine and other pragmatists (Buddhism does the same) argued otherwise - that concepts/theories derive meaning or truth-value from how useful they are in the real world (as a network, rather than individually).

Treating all philosophers as a one camp vs science is mistaken. Whatever any particular scientist or engineer say, there always will be some philosophical assumptions behind it. It's always better to make them explicit rather than be in the dark. The best scientists in history were pretty deep in philosophy as well.

Eg. Tononi is both philosopher and a scientist. He's clearly on Chalmers' side philosophically, he perceives consciousness as something fundamental, MUCH more fundamental than learning. He posits that even stable systems (so with no learning at all) can be conscious. Which makes a lot of sense from phenomenological point of view. He also adds a theory of how specifically consciousness may be related causally with the physical world. That's the scientific part.

Silvers, on the other hand, and the whole RL thing is not concerned with consciousness AT ALL! It's a completely different problem. Actually it may be the case that most of the learning processes in human mind are unconscious!

"There is no consciousness in itself, just consciousness of something. Learning is what ties together agent and environment..." Exactly - if you define learning as a relationship between a system and its environment, you don't need anything else (like cosciousness), just the actual and potential interactions.