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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

The thermostat in my house responds to stimuli, unless I sedate it by taking out the batteries. Is it conscious? No, of course not. In an era where charges of "fake news" are flying thick and fast, the NYT, of all venues, really should not publishing this sort of pseudo-scientific rubbish.

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Do you have a working definition of consciousness?

I do, but I'm not going to play this game unless you seriously want to argue that a thermostat is conscious, in which case you have to go first.

Seems to me that consciousness is a matter of degree, with devices like thermostats at one pole, and self-reflective neocortex-style consciousness at the other.

Not that I have a strong desire to defend the consciousness of thermostats. I just wouldn't consider the article pseudo-scientific rubbish, and I definitely wouldn't just write off this type of inquiry or discussion as some kind of harmful fake news.

> consciousness is a matter of degree

That's true, but that doesn't mean that thermostats are conscious. Shortness is "a matter of degree" too. Nonetheless, Danny Devito is short (4'10"), and Michael Jordan (6'6") is not. We can argue about Tom Cruise (5'7") and Johnny Depp (5'10"), and with regards to consciousness, we can argue about dolphins and dogs and maybe even cockroaches. But not plants and not thermostats.

You're drawing arbitrary cutoffs in your height example. Which brings back the original question, what's your selection criteria for consciousness?

No, they are not arbitrary cutoffs. They are universally agreed upon conventions among speakers of English, and they give effective meaning to the words "short" and "tall". Quibbling over that is pure pedantry.

Convention = arbitary. It's conventional. For convenience. Relative. Not absolute. Same as your lines defining what is and isn't conscious.

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/569/2/Stoppard.pdf

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