The answer on the question in the topic of my contribution depends on other question. What is purpose why we construct robots?
Possible answers are:
- We construct robots as a bondsmen;
- We construct robots as the lords.
I claim that if the robots are bondsmen then they need the consciousness but if the robots are only the lords then the consciousness is something unnecessary.
Though my claim sound rather perplexed, I think it is deeply rooted in Hegel's passage Lordship and Bondage from the Phenomenology of Spirit. I think it could be very inspired for elucidation both evolution of consciousness and future investigations in the domain of consciousness including the robotics.
Hegel wrote that:
Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it exists for another (Hegel p. 111).
It means man strives for recognition by the other man and therefore he undergoes a life-and-death struggle, because only through such struggle man can approve himself as independent and pure being-for self.
The robots as a lord can function without consciousness. They do need not approve themselves by the means of suppression other being.
Robots can be constructed with the map of their environment and therefore they can reflect concrete situation in which they are but it is long way to conscious being.
To be conscious it means that something like map of environment is previous to percepts that we scrutinize the world through our inner thought's model of world, through our opinion how the world is. We continually expect what will be in the next moment and we are prepared for it. But robots can function very productively out of such mechanism.
If man wants to be lord then he needs the conscious robots. Man long for recognition as independent consciousness whose essential nature is to be for itself (Hegel p.115).
Unconscious robot is only machine and it is not enough for our self-consciousness and our self-identity.