Jul 5, 2023 06:32 PM
(This post was last modified: Jul 5, 2023 06:37 PM by C C.)
https://iai.tv/articles/anil-seth-the-ha..._auid=2020
The hard problem of consciousness has puzzled philosophers and neuroscientists alike for decades. Here a philosopher, Riccardo Manzotti, and a neuroscientist, Anil Seth, meet to discuss consciousness, the hallucination of reality, and whether consciousness is inside or outside the brain.
(Riccardo Manzotti) Let me ask you another general question that has always surprised me. If we did not know that there was such a thing as conscious experience, are there any experimental results that suggest that there is something else going on in the brain besides neuronal activity and metabolism? If you were, say, an alien AI without any consciousness studying the physiology of human beings with no access whatsoever to their subjective reports, would you have any cue that there is something more than neural processes?
(Anil Seth) What a wonderful question! It’s true that the starting point for consciousness research, whether in science or philosophy, has been rooted in the first person, in introspection. From this perspective, the idea that consciousness is a phenomenon in need of explanation seems undeniable. (Of course, some people - so-called ‘strong illusionists’ - do deny this, but I find this position highly implausible. I do find some appeal in a weaker form of illusionism which recognizes that consciousness exists but suggests that it might not be what we think it is. I wonder where you stand on illusionism?)
Back to your question. Since your alien AIs lack consciousness, and are also unaware of the fact that humans talk about being conscious all the time, I suppose they would be (unconsciously) puzzled by all the neuronal and metabolic happenings inside human brains. They might try to be proper behaviourists, explaining human behavior without recourse to mental states – and especially not conscious mental states (since they’d not have the concept of consciousness). But, like the actual behaviourists that dominated Western psychology throughout much of the 20th Century, I think they’d come up short.
I think conscious experiences play important functional roles for humans and other animals too. Quite what these roles might be is still much discussed, but a good way to think about it is that consciousness brings together a large amount of organism-relevant information in a format that helps guide adaptive and flexible behaviour, to best help the organism stay alive. We experience the world, and the self, not as it is, but as it is useful for us to do so. So, understanding human (and animal) behaviour likely requires recognizing that consciousness exists, and that it is useful. This is one reason why the neuroscience of consciousness is probably best not left to unconscious alien AIs.
(RM) In you book and your talks, you often use the expressions “inside”, “inner world”, “from inside”. These expressions seem a physical version of the mentalistic notion of interiority. What do you exactly mean with “inner world”?
(AS) I mean something rather simple. For me, there is an outer world – the world of objective reality, as described by physicists. The inner world is the world of conscious experience. Of course, conscious experiences include experiences of the world, as well as experiences of the self, but they are ‘inner’ in the sense that they depend on the brain. The world that we experience is an active brain-based construction, it is not the world as it really is. I’m with Kant here, when he claims that it doesn’t even make sense for us to directly experience objective reality. The world as it really is, is always, for all conscious creatures, hidden behind a sensory veil. Just to be especially clear: for me the inner world is all of experience, not only the experiences that we feel as being inside us, like thoughts and feelings... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED (scivillage): Why scientists haven’t cracked consciousness
The hard problem of consciousness has puzzled philosophers and neuroscientists alike for decades. Here a philosopher, Riccardo Manzotti, and a neuroscientist, Anil Seth, meet to discuss consciousness, the hallucination of reality, and whether consciousness is inside or outside the brain.
(Riccardo Manzotti) Let me ask you another general question that has always surprised me. If we did not know that there was such a thing as conscious experience, are there any experimental results that suggest that there is something else going on in the brain besides neuronal activity and metabolism? If you were, say, an alien AI without any consciousness studying the physiology of human beings with no access whatsoever to their subjective reports, would you have any cue that there is something more than neural processes?
(Anil Seth) What a wonderful question! It’s true that the starting point for consciousness research, whether in science or philosophy, has been rooted in the first person, in introspection. From this perspective, the idea that consciousness is a phenomenon in need of explanation seems undeniable. (Of course, some people - so-called ‘strong illusionists’ - do deny this, but I find this position highly implausible. I do find some appeal in a weaker form of illusionism which recognizes that consciousness exists but suggests that it might not be what we think it is. I wonder where you stand on illusionism?)
Back to your question. Since your alien AIs lack consciousness, and are also unaware of the fact that humans talk about being conscious all the time, I suppose they would be (unconsciously) puzzled by all the neuronal and metabolic happenings inside human brains. They might try to be proper behaviourists, explaining human behavior without recourse to mental states – and especially not conscious mental states (since they’d not have the concept of consciousness). But, like the actual behaviourists that dominated Western psychology throughout much of the 20th Century, I think they’d come up short.
I think conscious experiences play important functional roles for humans and other animals too. Quite what these roles might be is still much discussed, but a good way to think about it is that consciousness brings together a large amount of organism-relevant information in a format that helps guide adaptive and flexible behaviour, to best help the organism stay alive. We experience the world, and the self, not as it is, but as it is useful for us to do so. So, understanding human (and animal) behaviour likely requires recognizing that consciousness exists, and that it is useful. This is one reason why the neuroscience of consciousness is probably best not left to unconscious alien AIs.
(RM) In you book and your talks, you often use the expressions “inside”, “inner world”, “from inside”. These expressions seem a physical version of the mentalistic notion of interiority. What do you exactly mean with “inner world”?
(AS) I mean something rather simple. For me, there is an outer world – the world of objective reality, as described by physicists. The inner world is the world of conscious experience. Of course, conscious experiences include experiences of the world, as well as experiences of the self, but they are ‘inner’ in the sense that they depend on the brain. The world that we experience is an active brain-based construction, it is not the world as it really is. I’m with Kant here, when he claims that it doesn’t even make sense for us to directly experience objective reality. The world as it really is, is always, for all conscious creatures, hidden behind a sensory veil. Just to be especially clear: for me the inner world is all of experience, not only the experiences that we feel as being inside us, like thoughts and feelings... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED (scivillage): Why scientists haven’t cracked consciousness