Laying the Groundwork: The Issue of Consciousness

Riccarda Matteucci

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Laying the Groundwork

The Issue of Consciousness

In: Technology and Learning

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Riccarda Matteucci

Riccarda Matteucci
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 11–36

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004688612_002

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Abstract

This chapter results from present study on consciousness. Federico Faggin, the inventor of the microchip, wrote a section on this in the book I co-edited, The Robots Are Here (Sage & Matteucci, 2019). He believes that, according to present scientific knowledge, it is impossible to use robots in all human roles. In his latest book, Irriducibile: La coscienza, la vita, i computer e la nostra natura (2022), Faggin presents the technological and natural world along with human beings, employing scientific rigour and his vision of new possible connections from our increased knowledge of mental functioning. Faggin’s views result from more than 30 years of research. He explains humans as irriducibile (incapable of being reduced or of being diminished or simplified further) as no machine will be able to substitute for all their abilities, such as what has been endowed from genetic inheritance. His explanations make sense to my humanistic mind and allow us to consider what is beyond our physical human bodies.

An opposite view is offered by Antonio Damasio’s latest publication, Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious (2021). Damasio sheds light on the many aspects of consciousness to help us understand the relation between mind, intelligence and consciousness. Reviews consider it an authoritative text, based on scientific discoveries that explain a variety of views. Many philosophers, cognitive scientists, engineers and other investigators have been convinced that the question of consciousness was impossible to answer. Along with other prominent scientists, including Stuart Hameroff, David Chalmers, Christof Koch, Bernard Baars, Roger Penrose and Benjamin Libet, Damasio is convinced that recent biology, neuroscience, psychology and artificial intelligence (AI) findings are illuminating intelligence.¹ His research has transformed brain understanding and human behaviour regarding the development of consciousness. Being conscious is neither being awake nor sensing. Feeling and knowing explain human capacity for informing and transforming experience and perceiving the world. His thesis is of an evolved unified body and mind, but scientific explanations differ. These views are examined as a prerequisite for considering technology.

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Technology and Learning

Issues Vital to Address

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004688612

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 25 May 2024

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Laying the Groundwork

The Issue of Consciousness

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Technology and Learning

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