What’s it like to read these words? Are they putting you to sleep? Are you still awake? Or, should I say have you maintained waking consciousness?
What is consciousness?
There are many definitions and interpretations. It has something to do with being aware and responsive.
Maybe consciousness is somehow limited to animals with complex brains. That seems to rely on circular thinking. A brain is required for consciousness, therefore only things with brains can be conscious. Others add that there may even be a magical dualism of body, mind and/or spirit. Alternatively, consciousness might be produced via physical means, whether in brains, silicon, or any other sufficiently advanced material. Materialism, in this case, would suggest that consciousness, if real, would have some empirically detectable properties that are predictable based on the physical system. Beyond that, many serious researchers suggest that the magic of consciousness is everywhere. Panpsychism rules. We just have to quantify and qualify the consciousness in everything. Or, maybe consciousness is just a worthless arbitrary construct. Yet, awareness is real, isn’t it?
Everything responds to changing conditions, therefore, everything has some level of awareness. In medical circles, awareness is not enough for consciousness. For doctors and biomedical researchers, consciousness also entails self-awareness. How do you feel? Yet, that is not entirely accurate. How can anything be aware if not for a self, be it an atom, ant or aunt? Perhaps it’s better to say consciousness is acting like being aware of being aware. You have to be aware, know that you are aware, and demonstrate that you know that you are aware.
Based on self-awareness, biomedical researchers have localized certain aspects and the totality of human consciousness largely to specific areas spread throughout the cortex of the brain. Lesions lead to loss of specific functions, such as pattern or speech recognition. Localized electrical stimulation leads to perception of things that are not real. The accuracy of models built from lesion and stimulation observations can be tested and verified by correctly predicting effects of events such as brain surgery.
The sum of past results might suggest that the brain produces consciousness. An alternative explanation is that the brain is a great signal processor and data manager that allows us to coordinate and articulate consciousness based on sensory experience and language. It’s a good way to remember and talk about what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Nevertheless, it is still only a model simulated in our brains. It’s not reality. Stimulating false experiences with electromagnetism or drugs demonstrates this. Reality is the totality of the system, including sensory stimuli, nervous system signaling, representations constructed in our brains, and subsequent responses.
Which animals are conscious?
Ants don’t recognize themselves in a mirror, but they do have some sense of self. They respond to having a leg pulled or to being pinned to a board. Everything responds to being acted upon. It’s physics and chemistry. Is it not consciousness? If not, why not? So ants can’t tell us in human language what it’s like to be pinned to a board. They still writhe and wriggle on that pin. Do they hope to escape?
What do monarch butterflies think about when they are migrating thousands of miles over multiple generations? Do they feel urges, hunger, or fatigue? Is it all just in the moment sensation, or do they make any plans, like it looks like rain, I better stop in a half hour?
What do humpback whales think about during their migration to mating waters. Do they imagine their true loves, or maybe just kinky liaisons? Do they imagine having families?
While we’re in the ocean, I must also ask about octopuses. What is octopus awareness or consciousness? They have a big brain, along with smaller ones in each limb that can taste, touch and control movement independently.
Back on land, what about displaying birds and selective prospective mates? What are they thinking about? Do they imagine building nests and families?
Birds do seem to have consciousness, at least some do, even though their brains are structured differently than ours. Is that a case of convergent evolution, or is consciousness universal, and we just happen to share some commonalities with magpies in our placement on this spectrum?
What about plants?
Plants must be able to sense self from nonself in the tangled mess of organisms coexisting underground. Certain species definitely differentiate pollen and block self pollination. Plants also communicate with chemicals. A plant under attack responds at the local site of an attack with deadly force, while signaling to distant plant tissues to prepare for challenges. Furthermore, through volatile chemicals, plants can communicate to neighboring plants to prepare to battle marauding pests, attract parasites of insect pests, or signal to pollinators to come get their sweet flower nectar. But, plants don’t have brains or oral language, so they can’t be conscious, right?
How do plants feel in symbiotic relationships with beneficial soil organisms? Do they like mycorrhizal fungi? Does it matter in discussions of consciousness? We don’t seem to have direct awareness of our gut microbiota. We might be able to say we feel better in certain microbial relationships, but we can’t identify bacterial species by how they feel to our gut lining. Still our guts and the bacteria are aware of each other. Are we more conscious than plants?
How does a tree feel when a branch breaks off? It certainly responds to wounding. Otherwise there would be open vascular tissue that never heals. But, does it know about it? How can it heal and not know how to heal? We heal from cuts without having to think about it, though we can imagine it. That seems to be the difference. Trees can’t imagine, as far as we can tell. Some type of abstract visualizing is part of A-consciousness. But, again, they have a biochemical and genetic model, as we do for our injuries. The affected cells must be aware and responsive. How can we define consciousness to require sight and language without making a circular definition?
Artificial consciousness
What does a computer say when we ask how are you? Surely, we can program all sorts of responses, some of them even surprising. But, a computer doesn’t know what it’s like to be a computer, does it? How about when we ask a person? How often do we get more than a simple, programmed response? Computers can be programmed to check their log files and current demands, and give just as detailed and accurate response as any human. How many of us know how we really feel and can articulate it?
Can a computer have a favorite algorithm and process? We prefer some thoughts over others. Do they feel the heat of electrons coursing through their processors? Is it possible for computers? Is that even relevant for considerations of consciousness? Must conscious entities have favorites or feel heat? At any rate, we can simulate emotions. Are they real?
Brains are extraordinary organs, the human brain especially so. However, like everything else, a brain is nothing on its own. It needs to at least be connected to a sensory system, along with other autonomic systems that work together to keep the body functioning. Connected nerves, muscles and skeletons also help the brain control voluntary body movements. So, brains are great for processing information, but can a brain be conscious on it’s own, or can it be conscious if all of its connections are unaware of their surroundings. I suspect that the answer is no for both of these questions.
As computers are increasingly connected with IOT, sensory, and response devices, might they become more conscious? How long before sensory and response systems connected to computers rival or exceed those of animals? Will that make them more conscious than us?
Perhaps computers and/or robots can be conscious. Nothing has falsified that notion to date. If we can presume to be conscious ourselves, then we cannot assume that computers will never be conscious. Moreover, given problems with defining consciousness that do not resort to circularity, I contend that we cannot disprove that computers are already conscious.
Imagine the following, conscious reader. The rest of you can program a simulation.
The traffic of a city is overseen in a central traffic management facility. The central facility does not pay attention to the movements of every pedestrian, bicycle, car, bus, truck, train, helicopter, drone, plane, barge and boat. Some important movements are given special attention, but as long as everything is running smoothly, most transport goes unnoticed. Even if video is recorded on every corner, most won’t be watched. Only when there is an accident, traffic jam, parade, or other such outstanding event does anybody at the central traffic management facility take any note of events.
Yet, each traveler must have some level of awareness. Some may be impaired, but they are still aware, and they won’t be noticed as long as traffic keeps flowing. The central traffic management facility relies on the awareness of individual travelers in order to efficiently allocate its resources for special attention.
Where is the consciousness of traffic in that system? Is it only in the central facility, or is it in each traveler?
Let’s take it further. Suppose all of the delivery trucks are self driven, and the central traffic management facility is entirely automated. Emergency response vehicles are also self driven. If there is a break down or accident involving only delivery trucks, no meat sacks are involved anywhere in the process from initial incident, through noticing the incident, to cleaning up the broken trucks, and even filing a report.
Is there any consciousness in that system? There was awareness, a model for a response, and a description of the response. Why wouldn’t it be conscious?
Giulio Tononi and other great researchers of consciousness might say that neither the sum of traffic management nor the auto driving system would be conscious. It matters how it is done, not just what is done. Consciousness is contained in discrete biological entities. If that holds, then a computer that perfectly simulates consciousness, such as through uploading all brain structures, memories and activities to computer code, is still not conscious, nor does it contain a conscious uploaded human. An analogy is that we can simulate mass, such as in video games, but it is not really mass.
However, mass is a precise physical term. That analogy may or may not prove to be accurate for consciousness. Others espouse functionalism, which posits that it is the process that defines consciousness, not what is doing it. An analogy there is that studying in the library or at home is still studying. Perhaps I can be uploaded into a computer and still be me, after all.
So What
Awareness is real, as is consciousness, apparently. Defining and understanding consciousness are problematic. Problems arise when humans make false dichotomies. We try to split related things into separate categories. Oftentimes, it seems that we do this to feel special in some way. Humans are above nature. Our consciousness is different. Technology is a tool to be exploited.
When we break through these dichotomies, we see that we are part of continuous, dynamic systems. Though some contend that only creatures with brains can be conscious, few maintain that only humans are conscious. Being part of related systems and living in balance within these systems is special in and of itself. We don’t need to stand out and separate ourselves. We do need to act with respect towards other members of the systems if we wish to continue living with them. As yet, we have not found alternative habitats, and we likely will not for the foreseeable future.
Our intelligence allows us to understand nature and develop technology. Advantageous traits, most notably adaptability and complex language, have allowed us to survive and thrive wide ranging and challenging conditions. Physical attributes, such as sight, hearing, opposable thumbs, and upright walking certainly help, but the primary source of our success and our biggest advantage is clearly our brains. Mental might has helped us overcome overwhelming odds.
Now we need to use our brains to balance nature and technology.
Humans need nature. We can’t replicate it. There are no synthetic alternatives for the food we eat, the air we breathe, or the water we drink. The biosphere is constantly renewed through cycling of elements and filtering out impurities, much of it through activities of the biosphere itself. At the same time, we are fairly certain that other animals are conscious, and also have some indication that diverse qualities and quantities of consciousness might be extensive throughout nature.
Society relies on technology. Over eons, we have incorporated technology in every aspect of our existence. Without advanced technology in food production, sanitation, health care, communication and transportation, far fewer people would be living shorter, more isolated lives. A problem is that we exploit technology just as we do nature, even as we immerse ourselves in artificial systems that are more intelligent than us in specific tasks now, with general adaptability possibly following.
To date, our gains have come at the expense of other species, which threatens our own future. A primary challenge for us is figuring out how to simultaneously sustain technologically advanced human populations while nurturing diverse and resilient natural systems. We also should try to avoid making enemies of artificial intelligence, whether or not it is conscious. Even simulations can decide to eliminate opponents.
Acknowledging our dependence on these systems and respecting the role for each natural and technological member of our world might be good starts. We can acknowledge the benefits of both aspects of humanity, and do our best to work within both systems. Realizing that we are not alone in the realm of consciousness might also be a good reason to act more respectfully towards our natural and technological cohorts.