June 03rd, 2024

First off you must not confuse consciousness with thinking.  They are not the same.  William James back in 1904 in his essay ‘Does Consciousness Exist?’ stated the issue correctly.

To deny plumbly that ‘consciousness’ exists seems so absurd on the face of it…that I fear some readers will follow me no further.  Let me then immediately explain that I mean only to deny that the word stands for an entity, but to insist most emphatically that it does stand for a function.  There is, I mean, no aboriginal stuff or quality of being, contrasted with that of which material objects are made; but there is a function in experience which thoughts perform, and for the performance of which this quality of being is invoked.  That function is knowing.
(William James, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, Vol. 1, no. 18, September 1, 1904, pg. 478.)

Consciousness is a function of material things.  Any material thing which has sensory organs and thus can perceive and feel its environment is a material thing that has consciousness.  To feel, to experience is to be and to have consciousness. 

What is the next step in the evolution of things that have consciousness?  A thing that has feeling is the very minimal level, the very minimal capacity to claim that it has consciousness.  What is next needed is to have the capacity to differentiate between feelings and to classify them such that there is a recognition that some are beneficial and worth repeating and others are worth avoiding.  This is the key to the next level of consciousness, a thing  that has the capacity to feel and to classify and differentiate those feelings.

Will a machine, a computer ever have consciousness?  Only if and only when a machine is built that has sensory systems that can bring that information into its stored memory.  If it can register feelings- sensory experiences, then it will have the very rudimentary aspect of consciousness.  When it can classify those feelings and can associate its activities with those sensations, it will have the next level of beings that have consciousness.  When it can recognize that some feelings are worth avoiding and worth repeating then it will have gained a level of development equal to a single celled organism. 

Current AI programs are not conscious because they have no capacity to sense their environment.