Ep. 231 - How to Tell When Babies and Machines Are Conscious w/Dr. Claudia Passos

Parker's Pensées

In episode 231 of the Parker's Pensées Podcast, I'm joined by Dr. Claudia Passos to discuss her talk from Mind Fest 2023 at Florida Atlantic University, the official opening of the Center for the Future Mind. We discuss two different approaches to solving the problem of infant consciousness (the problem of determining that they are in fact conscious): the behavioral/neurobiological markers approach and the theory approach. After we discussed the former we dove into 2 philosophical theories of consciousness and 2 scientific approaches. We then go deep into the philosophy of AI and how we might be able to tell if and when they become conscious. Check the time stamps for specific topics. Claudia Passos-Ferreira is Assistant Professor of Bioethics. She studied psychology at the Rio de Janeiro State University and earned her MA and Ph.D. in the program of Human Sciences and Health Sciences in Public Health there. She obtained a second Ph.D. in Philosophy at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Find out more from Claudia here: https://publichealth.nyu.edu/faculty/claudia-maria-passos-ferreira if you like this podcast, then support it on Patreon for $3, $5 or more a month. Any amount helps, and for $5 you get a Parker's Pensées sticker and instant access to all the episode as I record them instead of waiting for their release date. Check it out here: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/parkers_pensees If you want to give a one-time gift, you can give at my Paypal: https://paypal.me/ParkersPensees?locale.x=en_US Check out my merchandise at my Teespring store: https://teespring.com/stores/parkers-penses-merch Come talk with the Pensées community on Discord: dsc.gg/parkerspensees Sub to my Substack to read my thoughts on my episodes: https://parknotes.substack.com/ Check out my blog posts: https://parkersettecase.com/ Check out my Parker's Pensées YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYbTRurpFP5q4TpDD_P2JDA Check out my other YouTube channel on my frogs and turtles: https://www.youtube.com/c/ParkerSettecase Check me out on Twitter: https://twitter.com/trendsettercase Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/parkers_pensees/0:00 - Claudia Passos's background in Self-Consciousness 16:19 - The Distribution and Infant Consciousness Problems 21:30 - Why 3rd person methods are insufficient 29:16 - What is 'Pain'? 36:57 - The Problem of Other Minds 42:19 - Are Infants Super-Actors? 49:35 - philosophical theories of consciousness 54:46 - first order representationalism and infant consciousness 59:36 - Higher Order Thoughts and infant consciousness 1:11:18 - Integrated Information Theory of consciousness 1:17:57 - Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness 1:27:42 - Is Consciousness all or nothing? 1:30:13 - Consciousness and Moral Status? 1:34:28 - Are Conscious Machines Metaphysically Possible? 1:37:54 - How Could We Know If a Machine Was Conscious? 1:42:50 - Machine Consciousness and Theories of Mind 1:50:36 - Will Machine Take Our Philosophy Jobs? 1:54:39 - Will Machines like Guarana Antarctica?