LETTERS
The Conscious Robot
Reading “No Ghost in the Machine” in the Spring issue of the SCHOLAR, I waited in vain for Mark Halpern to establish the salient features of human thought, of which he declares robots not capable.
Underlying his reasoning is the idea of our self-awareness, our consciousness—of all that we do, including our thought processes. This self-awareness leads to the notions of volition and free will. So, the question posed on the magazine’s cover—Will robots ever think?—should be: Will robots ever achieve consciousness?
That question may be unanswerable. Do we know where the sense of self comes from? Coleridge’s definition of the “primary imagination” suggests an answer: “the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and …
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