by Daniel Yim
But more crucially, let’s suppose that one day we can discover, or create, a physical body based on silicon instead of carbon, and this body is conscious. This is conceivable—meaning only that we don’t yet know enough to rule it out. Such a body would not be a computer, and the conceivability of such a body has no bearing on the fact that a computer can’t be conscious.
(Here, to avoid unnecessary verbal complications, I’m skipping over the fact that according to the quaint argot of “artificial intelligence,” any object, such as a screwdriver or a paperweight, or a brain, is defined as being “a digital computer.” Here I’m following ordinary speech, where “a computer” is something like my laptop, whereas a screwdriver, a paperweight, or a human brain are not “computers.”)
We can transfer the substrate ‘argument’ to the case of Pinocchio. Since we can’t rule out the possibility that consciousness could have a different substrate, therefore (logical slip) we can’t rule out that possibility that a block of wood could become conscious, and therefore (another logical slip) a block of wood could “in principle” be conscious. We seem to have proved that a block of wood could do the trick as well! But we know that can’t be right, because we happen to know that the idea of a block of wood becoming conscious is totally silly. We have been handed something that looks a bit like an argument but is actually bogus through and through.
As far as we can tell, the cosmos is empty of consciousness except as this has arisen in animal brains. But this, of course, doesn’t show that consciousness couldn’t arise in a different physical system (or hasn’t already). So, we may speculate, there could be consciousness arising from a different type of physical system, perhaps very different in some ways from the animal brains we know about.
In Whipping Star (spoiler alert), Frank Herbert supposes that stars are conscious and that they can intervene in the interactions of other conscious beings such as ourselves. We can’t prove this isn’t true, but I suspect that if civilization and science survive for a couple of hundred more years, we will establish the physical essentials of consciousness, and thus be able to prove that stars can’t possibly be conscious.
We do not know of any consciousness except in animal bodies. At one time people attributed consciousness to natural forces, but we now know this to be false. At one time people believed they had observed ghosts or other disembodied consciousnesses (though in many versions the ghosts have bodies of sorts). But we have learned that ghosts, like the Martian canals, or like the Loch Ness Monster, or like the spontaneous generation of living organisms from dirt, though once frequently observed, simply cease to be observed when the observation procedures are tightened up.
Consciousness is a real physical property produced by a physical system. Consider any other property which can be produced by a physical system—say, stickiness (I mean literal stickiness, like the stickiness of Scotch tape). Can we write a computer program that would produce stickiness? No, never. Stickiness arises because of the specific structure of certain kinds of molecules. We can simulate stickiness in a computer program, that is, we can generate mathematical models of physical bodies which are sticky—they behave in the simulation as if they were sticky. But they are not really sticky. It’s no use saying that if computing power can be increased billions-fold, we will one day be able to get stickiness out of software. This is forever an absurdity. We may, of course, find or create sticky physical substances that have not existed before, and no doubt there are ways to do this. But we have to step outside the software to do it. We are then no longer simulating; we are replicating.
As it is with stickiness, so it is with consciousness. We may, perhaps, be able to bring into being new types of physical systems, in some ways radically unlike the animals we’re familiar with, which will be conscious. The argument that we don’t know that today’s animals are the only things which can be conscious points to the possibility of different types of physical systems which might be conscious; it doesn’t point to the possibility that software might become conscious.
One More Thing
If we did create a new type of physical system which could be conscious, it doesn’t follow that we would inflict upon these creatures a purposely false understanding of their place in the world.
We’ve seen that the arguments for software becoming conscious are more rhetorical than reasonable, and that the idea is, when all’s said and done, more than a bit fanciful. But there is another point we can raise against it. That is the question of the motive for any advanced civilization to create such a “simulated” fake world. Just as fans of The Matrix have trouble with the motive, so the theorists of a simulated world have trouble with the motive.
To condemn millions of minds to living in a fake world is obviously immoral, especially if that fake world is full of terrible suffering (real suffering, actual agony, not simulated suffering, which would be no suffering at all) which could easily have been eliminated by writing the program differently. And if it were possible to create real minds within software, then such minds would have their own way of experiencing the world, their own emotions, objectives, and sensibilities, no doubt dramatically different from those of mammals like us. There would be a moral imperative to provide conditions conducive to the flourishing and fulfillment of such software creatures (or not to create them in the first place).
No one will ever be able to create conscious software. But just supposing they could, it would be morally wrong for them to do it in such a way that these new software-minds were trapped in a fake world of illusion, instead of being able to reach out and grasp reality, as we do.
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Author Bios
ROBERT ARP works for the US Department of Defense and has many interests in philosophy. See robertarp.com. A time that he used the power of persuasion—as opposed to good reasoning-—to gain a benefit for himself was when he was a junior in high school running for the coveted senior-year position of Student Council President. He had dozens of pointed pencils made that read, “Be Sharp, Vote for Arp” and handed out dozens of buttons that read, “I’m Sharp, I’m Voting for Arp.” Of course, his button read, “I’m Arp, but I’m Still Voting for Arp.” He also had stickers made, and placed them on lockers, in lockers, under lockers, and over lockers . . . He even placed them on the back of bathroom stall doors and on the inside of the urinals.
Everywhere he went, he would unabashedly proclaim, “Be Sharp, Vote for Arp” so that students began echoing the slogan back at him in between class periods. During the big debate between the three candidates in the gym, at which the entire school was present, he purposely chose to go last. When asked the first question by the Principal, who was acting as moderator, “Mr. Arp, if elected, what will you do to better the high school community?” he paused for an uncomfortable amount of time, then leaned into the mic and responded in a deep voice, “NO COMMENT.” A mass hush fell upon the space. A split second later, several gasps were heard. Heads that were looking anywhere other than at the stage snapped forward. And all eyes were definitely on Rob. He continued: “. . . Which is what you will NEVER hear when I’m Student Council President!” People started clapping and cheering, hooting and hollering, and whooping and whistling as Rob laid out his plans to do X, Y, and Z next year for the school—plans that would never materialize because they were so unbelievably batshit crazy you’d have to be smoking salvia to think that they would, despite the fact that he did indeed win the presidency. He had “Mr. President” stitched on his school sweater the day before school started his senior year—what a cocky bastard . . .