Forget the Bat

The philosophical legacy of the idea that there must be something it is like to be a conscious organism, together with an inclination to regard organic life forms as having qualities fundamentally distinct from other physical systems, have adversely affected the development of the nascent discipline of machine consciousness. This paper highlights some of the factors involved, and as a corrective proposes a reframing of machine consciousness within a thoroughgoing engineering context. This is shown to offer some significant avenues for progress, while bringing with it some theoretical problems requiring further consideration such as the status of the possible consciousness of a wholly virtual system.