Consciousness, Agents and the Knowledge Game

Author: Floridi, Luciano

Source: Minds and Machines, Volume 15, Numbers 3-4, November 2005 , pp. 415-444(30)

Publisher: Springer

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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

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11023-005-9005-z

Affiliations: 1: Email: luciano.floridi@philosophy.oxford.ac.uk

Publication date: 2005-11-01