Laws@SRI-STRIPE.ARPA.UUCP (01/26/87)
Stevan Harnad: Everyone knows that there's no AT&T to stick a pin into, and to correspondingly feel pain. You can do that to the CEO, but we already know (modulo the TTT) that he's conscious. You can speak figuratively, and even functionally, of a corporation as if it were conscious, but that still doesn't make it so. [...] Do you believe [...] corporations feel pain, as we do? They sure act like it when someone puts arsenic in their capsules. I'm inclined to grant a limited amount of consciousness to corporations and even to ant colonies. To do so, though, requires rethinking the nature of pain and pleasure (to something related to homeostatis). I don't know of any purely mechanical systems that approach consciousness, but computer operating systems and adaptive communications networks are close. The issue is partly one of complexity, partly of structure, partly of function. I am assuming that neurons and other "simple" systems are C-1 but not C-2 -- and C-2 is the kind of consciousness that people are really interested in. C-2 consciousness seems to require that at least one subsystem be "wired" to reason about its own existence, although I gather that this may be denied in the theory of situated automata. The mystery for me is why only >>one<< subsystem in my brain seems to have that introspective property -- but multiple personalities or split-brain subjects may be examples that this is not a necessary condition. There are serious problems with the quantitative view of consciousness. No doubt my alertness, my sensory capacity and my knowledge admit of degrees. I may feel more pain or less pain, more or less often, under more or fewer conditions. But THAT I feel pain, or experience anything at all, seems an all-or-none matter, and that's what's at issue in the mind/body problem. An airplane either can fly or it can't. (And there's no way half a B-52 can fly, no matter how you choose your half.) Yet there are simpler forms of flight used by other entities -- kites, frisbees, paper airplanes, butterflies, dandelion seeds, ... My own opinion is that insects and fish feel pain, but often do so in a generalized, nonlocalized way that is similar to a feeling of illness in humans. Octopi seem to be conscious, but with a psychology like that of spiders (i.e., if hungry, conserve energy and wait for food to come along). I assume that lower forms experience lower forms of consciousness along with lower levels of intelligence. Such continuua seem natural to me. If you wish to say that only humans and TTT-equivalents are conscious, you shoud bear the burden of establishing the existence and nature of the discontinuity. It also seems arbitrary to be "willing" to ascribe consciousness to neurons and not to atoms. When someone demonstrates that atoms can learn, I'll reconsider. (Incidentally, this raises the metaphysical question of whether God can be conscious if He already knows everything.) You are questioning my choice of discontinuity, but mine is easy to defend (or give up) because I assume that the scale of consciousness tapers off into meaninglessness. Asking whether atoms are conscious is like asking whether aircraft bolts can fly. The issue here is: what justifies interpreting something/someone as conscious? The Total Turing Test has been proposed as our only criterion. What criterion are you using with neurons? Your TTT has been put forward as the only justifiable means of deciding that an entity is conscious. I can't force myself to believe that, although you have already punched holes in arguments far more cogent than I could have raised. Still, I hope you're not insisting that no entity can be conscious without passing the TTT. Even a rock could be conscious without our having any justifiable means of deciding so. And even if single cells are conscious -- do feel pain, etc. -- what evidence is there that this is RELEVANT to their collective function in a superordinate organism? What evidence is there that it isn't? Evolved and engineered systems generally support the "form follows function" dictum. Aircraft parts have to be airworthy whether or not they can fly on their own. Why doesn't replacing conscious nerve cells with synthetic molecules matter? (To reply that synthetic substances with the same functional properties must be conscious under these conditions is to beg the question.) I beg your pardon? Or rather, I beg to beg your question. I presume that a synthetic replica of myself, or any number of such replicas, would continue my consciousness. If I sound like I'm calling an awful lot of gambits "question-begging," it's because the mind/body problem is devilishly subtle, and the temptation to capitulate by slipping consciousness back into one's premises is always there. Perhaps professional philosophers are able to strive for a totally consistent world view. We armchair amateurs have to settle for tackling one problem at a time. A standard approach is to open back doors and try to push the problem through; if no one push back, the problem is [temporarily] solved. (Another approach is to duck out the back way ourselves, leaving the problem unsolved: Why is there Being instead of Nothingness? Who cares?) I'm glad you've been guarding the back doors and I appreciate your valiant efforts to clarify the issues. I have to live with my gut feelings, though, and they remain unconvinced that the TTT is of any use. If I had to build an aircraft, I would not begin by refuting theological arguments about Man being given dominion over the Earth rather than the Heavens. I would start from a premise that flight was possible and would try to derive enabling conditions. Perhaps the attempt would be futile. Perhaps I would invent only the automobile and the rocket, and fail to combine them into an aircraft. But I would still try. -- Ken Laws