mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== The Problem of Consciousness Summary Commentary Relevance to Machine Consciousness Summary "Men have been conscious of the problem of consciousness almost since consciousness began." - pg. 2 Jaynes begins by acknowledging that questions concerning consciousness are among the most enduring and perplexing in human history. What is consciousness? Where did it come from? And why did it arise? He asserts that the long history of though concerning consciousness is filled with metaphors of the mind that are inspired by how the world is perceived, and so those metaphors have evolved and changed with human civilization. Also, the questions posed have changed. The advent of the theory of evolution shifted some attention from the mind-body problem to the problem of the origin of the mind. Jaynes proceeds to outline eight theories of the origin of consciousness that have been in favor at one time or another. They are summarized below. * Consciousness as a Property of Matter: This very extensive view, popular in the early 1900's, held that consciousness is merely a property of interacting matter. For example, the interaction between a glass and the table on which it rests is different only in complexity from the relationship between consciousness and that of which we are conscious. The ascendency of this Neo-Realist view appeared at a time when particle physics was enjoying astounding success, which seemed likely to spill over into the realm of explaining the workings of the human mind in terms of mathematical relationships between particles in space. * Consciousness as a Property of Protoplasm: This somewhat less extensive view holds that consciousness is a property of all living things, even the lowly amoeba and paramecium. It was touted by books such as The Psychic Life of Micro-Organisms. Jaynes dismisses this view, including its application to perhaps less clear cases such as cats and dogs, by warning that humans have a natural tendency to anthropomorphize, with the attendant problem of seeing a consciousness where there is no other basis for doing so. * Consciousness as Learning: To avoid the problem of attributing consciousness to one-celled animals, researchers attached the criterion of the ability to learn to the existence of consciousness. The reasoning was that if an animal could modify its behavior based on experience, then it must be having an experience; it must be conscious. * Consciousness as a Metaphysical Imposition: This view holds that consciousness did not arise naturally but was imposed on humans from outside of our biological system by some external force. The impetus cited for this view is the size of the chasm between humans and all other animals in terms of the complexity of our internal experience. How is it that humans alone evolved such a rich internal world? * The Helpless Spectator Theory: This could also be called the "consciousness as epiphenomenon" theory. To remain faithful to the continuity seen in evolution by Darwin, it was posited that consciousness was simply a result of the evolution of nervous systems to a sufficient level of complexity. However, consciousness once evolved is a helpless spectator of events; what we do is completely controlled by the wiring of the brain and our consciousness is merely along for the ride. * Emergent Evolution: The antireductionist doctrine of Emergent Evolution was an attempt to rescue consciousness from its position as a helpless spectator. "Its main idea is a metaphor: Just as the property of wetness cannot be derived from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen alone, so consciousness emerged at some point in evolution in a way underivable from its constituent parts." Properties of living things arose from the joining of complex molecules; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but the emergent properties are related to their constituents. Therefore, consciousness arose as something completely new at some point in evolution, with causal efficacy in bodily behavior. However, all of the important questions remain. What is consciousness? When, how, and why did it arise? * Behaviorism: Jaynes presents behaviorism as the claim that consciousness is "nothing at all," that it can be reduced to a small number of reflexes, to stimulus and response, and to reinforcement. Jaynes asserts that since nobody really believes that they are not conscious, behaviorism was nothing more than a refusal to talk about consciousness. The difference between the behaviorist view and the helpless spectator view is not made clear. * Consciousness as the Reticular Activating System: Following the lead of Descartes in placing consciousness in the pineal gland, scientists have long sought a biologically plausible throne in the human body from which consciousness reigns. One candidate is the reticular formation, a group of neurons that touches and influences a large number of cognitive, sensory, and motor systems in interesting ways. Jaynes feels that this bottom up approach is misguided. Even if we had a complete wiring diagram of a human brain, we could never infer whether that brain contained a consciousness. Rather, we must start from the top, from our own conception of what consciousness is, before we start looking for its neurological locus. Commentary While some of positions outlined above seem nonsensical, adherents to each exist. Remarkably, one of the many recurring arguments in comp.ai is whether or not rocks are conscious (consciousness as a property of matter). I feel most comfortable with the position outlined by Daniel Dennet in Consciousness Explained, one that did not originate with him, that we can never directly observe another's consciousness and therefore must attribute consciousness based on phenomenology. If interaction with another indicates that they have the subjective impression of consciousness, then that is as close as we can come to being sure that they are in fact conscious. That means that I may never know whether rocks or paramecium or cats or neonates are conscious, although I feel fairly certain of the answer for rocks and paramecium. The really interesting question that arises from Jaynes' discussion seems to be consciousness as a helpless spectator vs. consciousness as having causal efficacy. There are be two questions here: (1) Is consciousness useful? and (2) Do we have free will? If consciousness is no more than a spectator, at best narrating that which it has no power to alter, then it is of no use at all. However, it intuitively seems that consciousness is useful in that it allows us to try things out in our head before trying them out in the real world. That is the idea behind planning by visualization in the Baby project. The question is then, are we doing this trying out under the rigid direction of some algorithm, or do we "freely" choose the things that we consciously reflect upon or the actions that we take. Prior to the start of the Baby project, I would have said that every human clearly and without a doubt has free will. However, the more I think about the way I think, I think that the the answer may not be so clear. What do others think? Relevance to Machine Consciousness The question of the utility of consciousness has implications for how we will evaluate the level of Baby's consciousness. If consciousness is epiphenomenal and of no real utility, then it is easy to imagine the day on which Baby becomes conscious passing quitely, because we as the scientists observing Baby's behavior see no qualitative change. But wait, you may say, we have the ultimate power of looking inside Baby's head, examining Baby's data structures. Jaynes' assertion that even with a complete wiring diagram of a human brain we would not be able to say whether that brain contained a consciousness seems to apply here. What of phenomenology? We have identified language (internal speech) as a prerequisite for consciousness. But if we cannot interpret than internal speech, how will we evaluate Baby's subjective experience? In sum, just because we hypothesize N prerequisites for consciousness and then give Baby all N of them, we may find the evaluation of Baby's level of consciousness a difficult if not impossible task. _________________________________________________________________ Back to the Top Level Jaynes page _________________________________________________________________