The Hard Problem
Dualism
Physicalism
Idealism
Identifying Consciousness
I know I’m conscious, and you know you’re conscious. But how does each of us know the other is conscious? We have daily interactions with family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers. We assume they are conscious just like us. But how do we know? How does any of us know that other people aren’t just p-zombies, robots programmed to behave in such a way as to deceive us into thinking they are conscious? And beyond humans, how can we know whether animals, insects, plants, or AI programs are conscious?
There is a famous thought experiment called the Turing test, put forth by one of the great pioneering minds of computer science, Alan Turing. The Turing test says if a machine is able to fool people into believing it is a human, that machine is conscious. But this idea has not aged well. The first glaring problem is that one person being conscious does not depend on other people believing they are conscious. Whether or not you are conscious is a fact within reality. Secondly, we have programs today that pass the Turing test, but clearly aren’t conscious. For instance, if an internet chatbot writes a comment on a video or conversation thread with a few key words and some profanity, there is a chance that some people will be fooled into believing it is a human. Yet if you know how these bots are programmed, the idea that they are conscious is laughable. The Turing test was a genius visualization of the future, and extremely important to the history of computer science, but it has not turned out to be a useful tool for determining whether someone or something is conscious.
For this discussion, we will draw heavily on what has been discussed in the first three entries of the consciousness series, so if you haven’t read those, you may want to do so before continuing. We will assume Realism rather than Idealism, because answers in Idealism could go a million different ways, and as I have argued many a time, I think it is far more reasonable to believe Realism is true.
If Dualism is true, the answer is simple: develop technology that can precisely measure the processes going on in the brain. If energy and momentum are not conserved, appearing and disappearing in ways that correlate with the person’s choices, it is evidence that a soul is interfering with the brain. If energy and momentum are conserved, then that person has no soul, and, according to Dualism, is not conscious. This is a way Dualism can be tested; you know you are conscious, so if you turn this machine on yourself and find no violation of conservation of momentum or energy, then Dualism is false.
In order to shine light on how we know anybody else is conscious, we should first ask how we know we ourselves are conscious. This is referred to in philosophy as the meta-problem of consciousness. Each of us can say, “I’m conscious, and I know I am conscious, and I know I am not wrong.” It is not an assumption. It is an observation, something that is directly experienced, and requires explanation.
As far as we can tell, the brain follows the laws of physics, without any interference from dualistic soul stuff. This means all knowledge corresponds to patterns of neurons and electricity in our brains. This leads to the illusionist view mentioned above: the brain is aware of its own awareness. It has a neuro-electrical pattern corresponding with the way its own neuro-electrical patterns work. When translating those patterns into language, the brain makes the mouth call it “consciousness.” Thus, consciousness is something made-up by the brain to describe the neuro-electrical patterns that represent neuro-electrical patterns.
If you understood that, and if you’re like me, that explanation is not satisfying. According to the illusionist, we are p-zombies who think we are conscious, but we are wrong. But that cannot be true. You know you are conscious; that is an indisputable fact. If consciousness is an illusion, then we must ask how is it possible for the illusion to exist. It does not solve the problem, it merely changes the word describing the thing we’re trying to explain.
I have a hypothesis. As of writing this, I do not know if any professional philosopher has explicitly put forth the suggestion I am about to make. If the reason we have a concept of consciousness is because of a neuro-electrical pattern of information within our brains, and that is the end of the physical description of what is going on, explaining our outward behavior completely with no holes, then that pattern of information not only correlates with the concept of consciousness, it is consciousness.
More precisely, that pattern is a quale, a piece of conscious experience. In particular, it is the quale of self-awareness. Other qualia include things like colors, tastes, thoughts, concepts, and elements of imagination. If my hypothesis is correct, then the correlation between qualia and their corresponding patterns of information are not correlations at all; they are equivalent descriptions of exactly the same thing! This would be true no matter what material or substrate the patterns exist in.
If this is true, it answers both the hard problem and the meta-problem. How is it possible for consciousness to exist? Consciousness is patterns of referential information acted out by processes within physical reality. How can we know about consciousness, and ask the hard problem? Because knowing about consciousness is one of many things that are consciousness. And finally, we have discovered a way to know from the outside whether someone or something is conscious. The trick is to look at their information processing structure, be it a brain or a microchip, and see if it has conscious patterns.
Of course, this is merely a hypothesis. It answers all the questions and leaves no logical loose threads, at least as far as I can tell, and it doesn’t require postulating any new elusive features to our theories of physics. Speaking of which, it doesn’t even mention the q-word. Still, it is a hypothesis nonetheless. In order to build a theory incorporating it, we will need instruments that can read individual neurons in conscious human subjects, and build catalogs of qualia and their corresponding neuro-electrical patterns. This will stimulate a cycle of hypotheses and experiments, and the science of consciousness will reach maturity. Then, we may feel as comfortable saying we understand consciousness as we do saying we understand electricity, or sound waves, or the rainbow.
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