Searle has some weird beliefs about consciousness. Here is his description of a “Fading Qualia” thought experiment, where your neurons are replaced, one by one, with electronics:
… as the silicon is progressively implanted into your dwindling brain, you find
that the area of your conscious experience is shrinking, but that this shows no
effect on your external behavior. You find, to your total amazement, that you
are indeed losing control of your external behavior. You find, for example, that
when the doctors test your vision, you hear them say, ‘‘We are holding up a red
object in front of you; please tell us what you see.’’ You want to cry out, ‘‘I
can’t see anything. I’m going totally blind.’’ But you hear your voice saying in a
way that is completely out of your control, ‘‘I see a red object in front of me.’’
(J.R. Searle, The rediscovery of the mind, 1992, p. 66, quoted by Nick Bostrom here.)
This nightmarish passage made me really understand why the more imaginative people who do not subscribe to a computational theory of mind are afraid of uploading.
My main criticism of this story would be: What does Searle think is the physical manifestation of those panicked, helpless thoughts?
I don’t have Searle’s book, and may be missing some relevant context. Does Searle believe normal humans with unmodified brains can consciously affect their external behavior?
If yes, then there’s a simple solution to this fear: do the experiment he describes, and then gradually return the test subject to his original, all-biological condition. Ask him to describe his experience. If he reports (now that he’s free of non-biological computing substrate) that he actually lost his sight and then regained it, then we’ll know Searle is right, and we won’t upload. Nothing for Searle to fear.
But if, as I gather, Searle believes that our “consciousness” only experiences things and is never a cause of external behavior, then this is subject to the same criticism as Searle’s support of zombies.
Namely: if Searle is right, then the reason he is giving us this warning isn’t because he is conscious. Maybe in fact his consciousness is screaming inside his head, knowing that his thesis is false, but is unable to stop him from publishing his books. Maybe his consciousness is already blind, and has been blind from birth due to a rare developmental accident, and it doesn’t know what words he types in his books at all. Why should we listen to him, if his words about conscious experience are not caused by conscious experience?
Searle thinks that consciousness does cause behavior. In the scary story, the normal cause of behavior is supplanted, causing the outward appearance of normality. Thus, it’s not that consciousness doesn’t affect things, but just that its effects can be mimicked.
Nisan’s criticism is devastating, and has the advantage of not requiring technological marvels to assess. I do like the elegance of your simple solution, though.
David Chalmers discusses this particular passage by Searle extensively in his paper “Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia”: http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html
He demonstrates very convincingly that Searle’s view is incoherent except under the assumption of strong dualism, using an argument based on more or less the same basic idea as your objection.
Searle has some weird beliefs about consciousness. Here is his description of a “Fading Qualia” thought experiment, where your neurons are replaced, one by one, with electronics:
(J.R. Searle, The rediscovery of the mind, 1992, p. 66, quoted by Nick Bostrom here.)
This nightmarish passage made me really understand why the more imaginative people who do not subscribe to a computational theory of mind are afraid of uploading.
My main criticism of this story would be: What does Searle think is the physical manifestation of those panicked, helpless thoughts?
I don’t have Searle’s book, and may be missing some relevant context. Does Searle believe normal humans with unmodified brains can consciously affect their external behavior?
If yes, then there’s a simple solution to this fear: do the experiment he describes, and then gradually return the test subject to his original, all-biological condition. Ask him to describe his experience. If he reports (now that he’s free of non-biological computing substrate) that he actually lost his sight and then regained it, then we’ll know Searle is right, and we won’t upload. Nothing for Searle to fear.
But if, as I gather, Searle believes that our “consciousness” only experiences things and is never a cause of external behavior, then this is subject to the same criticism as Searle’s support of zombies.
Namely: if Searle is right, then the reason he is giving us this warning isn’t because he is conscious. Maybe in fact his consciousness is screaming inside his head, knowing that his thesis is false, but is unable to stop him from publishing his books. Maybe his consciousness is already blind, and has been blind from birth due to a rare developmental accident, and it doesn’t know what words he types in his books at all. Why should we listen to him, if his words about conscious experience are not caused by conscious experience?
Searle thinks that consciousness does cause behavior. In the scary story, the normal cause of behavior is supplanted, causing the outward appearance of normality. Thus, it’s not that consciousness doesn’t affect things, but just that its effects can be mimicked.
Nisan’s criticism is devastating, and has the advantage of not requiring technological marvels to assess. I do like the elegance of your simple solution, though.
David Chalmers discusses this particular passage by Searle extensively in his paper “Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia”:
http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html
He demonstrates very convincingly that Searle’s view is incoherent except under the assumption of strong dualism, using an argument based on more or less the same basic idea as your objection.