Consciousness, Agents and the Knowledge Game

Floridi, Luciano (2005) Consciousness, Agents and the Knowledge Game.

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Abstract

This paper has three goals. The first is to introduce the “knowledge game”, a new, simple and yet powerful tool for analysing some intriguing philosophical questions. The second is to apply the knowledge game as an informative test to discriminate between conscious (human) and conscious-less agents (zombies and robots), depending on which version of the game they can win. And the third is to use a version of the knowledge game to provide an answer to Dretske’s question “how do you know you are not a zombie?”.

Keywords:Artificial agents, consciousness, inferentialism, knowledge game, “muddy children” theorem, “the three wise men” theorem, zombies.
Subjects:Specific Sciences: Computer Science: Artificial Intelligence
ID Code:2546
Deposited By:Floridi, Luciano
Deposited On:27 November 2005
Additional Information:forthcoming in Minds and Machines