Making Robots Conscious of Their Mental States 

John McCarthy

Logical Sentences

    embed these in a robot

    allow robot to "observe" these

    make its own decisions based on thse observations

    meta-reasoning: thinking aobut its own thinking

       epistemology evolutionary advantage

    crucial to learning

Consciousness as mental self-awareness

    why just sentences?

Why not zombie robots?

    avoid paradoxes of logic

    what it takes to know--more thinking  

Is it still just a zombie?

    does the meta layer remove the zombieness?

    What about free will?

    What is it like to be?

Situational Calculus

    consequences of actions

    consequences of mental actions

Animals?

    They are not conscious?

    McCarthy: no meta-knowledge of sentences

Emotions?

    McCarthy: we should definitely avoid giving to robots

       Theory: emotions impose sentences in our heads, like perception