Machine Consciousness, Meta-Causation, and Mimicry

Explore a thought-provoking 22-minute conference talk from the Models of Consciousness Conferences that delves into the MetaDyn theory of pre-reflective phenomenal consciousness and its relationship to meta-causation at the physical level. Examine how meta-causation - the process of causation acting on causal instances themselves - relates to artificial intelligence and computer consciousness. Learn why current computer architectures may be incapable of generating consciousness regardless of algorithmic sophistication, due to their lack of suitable meta-causal patterns. Investigate the complex relationship between implementation-level meta-causation and computation-level processing, while considering how physical operations providing conscious processing could theoretically be simulated. Analyze the philosophical and scientific implications, including evolutionary aspects, of running consciousness simulations on both conventional and meta-causal machines, and understand why simulated consciousness may not equate to experiencing actual cognitive operations.