Self-awareness (a well-written character’s model includes a model of itself, and can do introspection using the intelligent behavior above)
What else is necessary to have consciousness? There are plenty of other things that could be important, but they don’t seem necessary to me upon reflection. For example:
Continuity of self; Time skips in stories involve coming up with approximately what happens over a period of time, and simply updating the character model based on the expected results of that. But if it turned out that significant parts of my life were skipped and fake memories of them were added, I would still value myself for the moments that weren’t skipped over, so I don’t think this is necessary for consciousness.
Independence; I can technically make a character do whatever I want, but that often breaks their characterization, and if someone was a god and could make me think or do anything, I’d want to get free, but I would still value myself.
Consistency; At my best my characters are mostly consistent in characterization, but I’m not often at my best. But mood swings and forgetting things happens to real people too, so I don’t think it’s a deal-breaker on consciousness.
Subconscious; A really good author almost certainly uses their own subconscious to model the character and their behavior, so it’s not clear that a character doesn’t have a subconscious. It’s not quite the same as a real person’s, but as long as it still results in the big 4 at the top I don’t think this matters much.
Advanced senses; Visualization is hard, so none of my characters have vision as good as mine, and even then, I usually just include basic awareness of their surroundings in their models rather than visualize every scene from each character’s perspective. But then, blind people are people, so that’s still not necessary for consciousness.
Maybe any of these alone isn’t enough to stop being a person, but combined they are? But I don’t see a reason why that would be the case.
I suppose you could argue that the character is just the author playing a role. That’s true, but it seems to me that if a subset of you is practically a complete person on its own with different emotions, preferences, and behaviors from your own, then saying they don’t matter because they’re just a subset of you doesn’t really sit well with me.
So where did I go wrong with this long chain of reasoning? What am I missing?
What exactly does “consciousness” even mean here, though?
I’ve written before, and at my best my model of my characters included:
Complex emotions (as in multiple emotions at once with varying intensities)
Intelligent behavior (by borrowing my own intelligence, my characters could react intelligently to the same range of situations as I can)
Preferences (they liked/disliked, loved/hated, desired/feared, etc)
Self-awareness (a well-written character’s model includes a model of itself, and can do introspection using the intelligent behavior above)
What else is necessary to have consciousness? There are plenty of other things that could be important, but they don’t seem necessary to me upon reflection. For example:
Continuity of self; Time skips in stories involve coming up with approximately what happens over a period of time, and simply updating the character model based on the expected results of that. But if it turned out that significant parts of my life were skipped and fake memories of them were added, I would still value myself for the moments that weren’t skipped over, so I don’t think this is necessary for consciousness.
Independence; I can technically make a character do whatever I want, but that often breaks their characterization, and if someone was a god and could make me think or do anything, I’d want to get free, but I would still value myself.
Consistency; At my best my characters are mostly consistent in characterization, but I’m not often at my best. But mood swings and forgetting things happens to real people too, so I don’t think it’s a deal-breaker on consciousness.
Subconscious; A really good author almost certainly uses their own subconscious to model the character and their behavior, so it’s not clear that a character doesn’t have a subconscious. It’s not quite the same as a real person’s, but as long as it still results in the big 4 at the top I don’t think this matters much.
Advanced senses; Visualization is hard, so none of my characters have vision as good as mine, and even then, I usually just include basic awareness of their surroundings in their models rather than visualize every scene from each character’s perspective. But then, blind people are people, so that’s still not necessary for consciousness.
Maybe any of these alone isn’t enough to stop being a person, but combined they are? But I don’t see a reason why that would be the case.
I suppose you could argue that the character is just the author playing a role. That’s true, but it seems to me that if a subset of you is practically a complete person on its own with different emotions, preferences, and behaviors from your own, then saying they don’t matter because they’re just a subset of you doesn’t really sit well with me.
So where did I go wrong with this long chain of reasoning? What am I missing?