The Copernican Argument for Alien Consciousness; The Mimicry Argument Against Robot Consciousness

Summary

On Copernican grounds, we should default assume that behaviorally sophisticated extraterrestrial entities would be conscious, because otherwise humans would be implausibly lucky to have consciousness while similar aliens lack it. However, this default assumption is canceled for entities designed to mimic superficial features of human consciousness, such as many current and near-future robots. These two arguments—the Copernican and Mimicry Arguments—defeat a parity principle that would apply the same behavioral tests to aliens and robots. The approach relies on epistemic principles of Copernican mediocrity and inference to the best explanation, remaining neutral about specific metaphysical theories of consciousness.

Study at a glance

Abstract

On broadly Copernican grounds, we are entitled to default assume that apparently behaviorally sophisticated extraterrestrial entities ("aliens") would be conscious. Otherwise, we humans would be inexplicably, implausibly lucky to have consciousness, while similarly behaviorally sophisticated entities elsewhere would be mere shells, devoid of consciousness. However, this Copernican default assumption is canceled in the case of behaviorally sophisticated entities designed to mimic superficial features associated with consciousness in humans ("consciousness mimics"), and in particular a broad class of current, near-future, and hypothetical robots. These considerations, which we formulate, respectively, as the Copernican and Mimicry Arguments, jointly defeat an otherwise potentially attractive parity principle, according to which we should apply the same types of behavioral or cognitive tests to aliens and robots, attributing or denying consciousness similarly to the extent they perform similarly. Instead of grounding speculations about alien and robot consciousness in metaphysical or scientific theories about the physical or functional bases of consciousness, our approach appeals directly to the epistemic principles of Copernican mediocrity and inference to the best explanation. This permits us to justify certain default assumptions about consciousness while remaining to a substantial extent neutral about specific metaphysical and scientific theories.