Michael Levin

I have some thoughts about it, but I don't feel like they're going to move the needle yet on that.

Well...

I mean, so if we really tackle consciousness per se in terms of the heart problem, that isn't necessarily going to be groundable in engineering, right?

That aspect of cognition is.

But actual consciousness per se, you know, first person perspective, I'm not sure that that's groundable in engineering.

And I think specifically what's different about it is there's a couple of things.

So let's, you know, here we go.

I'll say a couple of things about it.

about consciousness.

One thing is that what makes it different is that for every other aspect of science,

when we think about having a correct or a good theory of it, we have some idea of what format that theory makes predictions in.

So whether those be numbers or whatever, we have some idea.

We may not know the answer.

We may not have the theory, but we know that when we get the theory, here's what it's going to output.

And then we'll know if it's right or wrong.

For actual consciousness, not behavior, not neural correlates, but actual first-person consciousness,

If we had a correct theory of consciousness or even a good one, what the hell would, what, what format would, would it make predictions in?

Right.

Because, because all the things that we know about basically boil down to observable behaviors.

So the only thing I can think of when I think about that is, is, is what it'll be poetry or it'll be, it'll be, it'll be something to, um, if, if I ask you, okay, you've got a great theory of consciousness and here's this, here's this creature, maybe it's a natural one, maybe it's an engineer one, whatever.