Non-Reductive Physicalism for AGI

Abstract

Creature consciousness provides a physicalist account of the first-person awareness (contra Rosenthal). I argue that non-reductive consciousness is not about phenomenal qualia (Nagel’s what it is like to feel like something else); it is about the stream of awareness that makes any objects of perception epistemically available and ontologically present. This kind of consciousness is central, internally to one’s awareness. Externally, the feel about one’s significant other’s that “there is someone home” is quite important too. This is not substance dualism since creature consciousness and functional consciousness are both at different generality levels of physicalism. Surprisingly, pre-Hegel philosophy of pure subject is more fitting with the current engineering approach than analytical phenomenalism. The complementary view of subject- and object-related perspectives, may come from Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre; but here it is placed, securely within the physicalist paradigm. It is essential to the Engineering Thesis in Machine Consciousness, which helps us understand under what general conditions a machine would be first-person conscious, but when it is merely functionally conscious.