LETTERS

The Conscious Robot

Reading “No Ghost in the Machine” in the Spring issue of the SCHOLAR, I waited in vain for Mark Halpern to establish the salient features of human thought, of which he declares robots not capable.

Underlying his reasoning is the idea of our self-awareness, our consciousness—of all that we do, including our thought processes. This self-awareness leads to the notions of volition and free will. So, the question posed on the magazine’s cover—Will robots ever think?—should be: Will robots ever achieve consciousness?

That question may be unanswerable. Do we know where the sense of self comes from? Coleridge’s definition of the “primary imagination” suggests an answer: “the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and …