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Obviously self-awareness means beieg conscious, isn't it?


I don't think that's obvious. That's the question I was alluding to. What is self-awareness?

I build robots as a hobby. My robots are aware of their their environment and their place in it. In that sense, they're "self-aware" but nobody would argue they're conscious.

The underlying problem is that we have all these words that imply a precision that doesn't exist. All we can say for certain is that consciousness and self-awareness are effects we experience. Beyond that, all bets are off. We can't even really say what these things actually are.




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