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KnaveOfAllTrades comments on Confused as to usefulness of 'consciousness' as a concept - LessWrong
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Ok, so let's say I put two different systems in front of you, and I tell you that system A is conscious whereas system B is not. Based on this knowledge, can you make any meaningful predictions about the differences in behavior between the two systems ? As far as I can tell, the answer is "no". Here are some possible differences that people have proposed over the years:
Perhaps system A would be a much better conversation partner than system B. But no, System B could just be really good at pretending that it's conscious, without exhibiting any true consciousness at all.
System A will perform better at a variety of cognitive tasks. But no, that's intelligence, not consciousness, and in fact system B might be a lot smarter than A.
System A deserves moral consideration, whereas system B is just a tool. Ok, but I asked you for a prediction, not a prescription.
It is quite possible that I'm missing something; but if I'm not, then consciousness is an empty concept, since it has no effect on anything we can actually observe.
I feel like there's something to this line of inquiry or something like it, and obviously I'm leaning towards 'consciousness' not being obviously useful on the whole. But consider:
'Consciousness' is a useful concept if and only if it partitions thingspace in a relevant way. But then if System A is conscious and System B is not, then there must be some relevant difference and we probably make differing predictions. For otherwise they would not have this relevant partition between them; if they were indistinguishable on all relevant counts, then A would be indistinguishable from B hence conscious and B indistinguishable from A hence non-conscious, which would contradict our supposition that 'consciousness' is a useful concept.
Similarly, if we assume that 'consciousness' is an empty concept, then saying A is conscious and B is not does not give us any more information than just knowing that I have two (possibly identical, depending on whether we still believe something cannot be both conscious and non-conscious) systems.
So it seems that beliefs about whether 'consciousness' is meaningful are preserved under consideration of this line of inquiry, so that it is circular/begs the question in the sense that after considering it, one is a 'consciousness'-skeptic, so to speak, if and only if one was already a consciousness skeptic. But I'm slightly confused because this line of inquiry feels relevant. Hrm...