Question

Dennett and Harnad agree, for the most part, that machines can be conscious. Where would you say that their opinions on consciousness in machines/robots diverge?

Please be detailed!!

Answer 1

Dennett and Harnad's views are often seemed to diverge on the topic of "Strong AI".

Harnad usuaaly refers it to the "Symbol Grounding Problem". The idea arises by the fact that robots are purely based on syntax, codes and the syntax is not "grounded". It is all very well for huge AI programs to have data structures that try to refer to France, tea, but such imaginary reference is not the same as real reference, as per this line of criticism.

For example, let us suppose a computer/robot runs a simulation of the battle of Waterloo. We try to simmulate theis, but it may happen that some states of this encoding may make a simulation of the coffee proces in Ecuador.

So, what really connects the code to what it denotes? Or, what is it that grounds the symbol?