I have some thought experiments that illustrate why I adopt the functionalist point of view, mainly because it results as the last consistent contender.
I will read them soon.
What is Hamlet? I mean really, what is it? When shakespeare wrote it into his first manuscript, was Hamlet that manuscript? Did it exist before then?
To stretch your analogy a bit, I think that words are the first approximation of what Hamlet is, certainly more so than a piece of paper or a bit of ink, but that the analysis cannot really end with words. The words were probably changed a bit from one edition or one printing to the next. The meaning of the words has changed some over the centuries. By social convention, it is legitimate for a director or producer of a classic play to interpret the play in his or her own style; the stage directions are incomplete enough to allow for considerable variation in the context in which the scripted lines are delivered, and yet not all contexts would be equally acceptable, equally well-received, equally deserving of the title “Hamlet.” Hamlet has been spoofed, translated, used as the unspoken subtext of instrumental music or wordless dance; all these things are also part of what it is for something to be “Hamlet.” Hamlet in one sense existed as soon as Shakespeare composed most of the words in his head, and in another sense is still coming into being today.
Likewise, your consciousness and my consciousness is certainly made up of neurons, which in turn are made of quarks and things, but it is unlikely that all my consciousness is stored in my brain; some is in my spine, some is in my body, in the way that various cells have had their epigenetic markers moved so as to activate or deactivate particular codons at particular pH levels, in the way that other people remember us and interact with us and in the way that a familiar journal entry or scent can revive particular memories or feelings. Quarks themselves may be basic, or they may be composed of sub-sub-subatomic particles, which in turn are composed of still smaller things; perhaps it is tortoises all the way down, and if we essentially have no idea of how it is that the neurons in our brain give rise to consciousness, why should we expect a model that is accurate only to the nearest millionth of a picometer to capture us in enough fidelity to replicate consciousness?
If a toneless machine read aloud the bare words of Hamlet with the rhythm of a metronome, would it really be Hamlet? Would an adult who understood 16th century English but who had no previous exposure to drama be able to understand such a Hamlet?
What is Hamlet? I mean really, what is it? When shakespeare wrote it into his first manuscript, was Hamlet that manuscript? Did it exist before then?
To stretch your analogy a bit, I think that words are the first approximation of what Hamlet is, certainly more so than a piece of paper or a bit of ink, but that the analysis cannot really end with words.
[..]
Hamlet in one sense existed as soon as Shakespeare composed most of the words in his head, and in another sense is still coming into being today.
I think we would agree then that the ‘substance’ of Hamlet is a pattern of ideas—information. As is a mind.
Likewise, your consciousness and my consciousness is certainly made up of neurons
Err no! No more than Hamlet is made up of ink! Our consciousness is a pattern of information, in the same sense as Hamlet. It is encoded in the synaptic junctions, in the same sense that Hamlet can be encoded on your computer’s hard drive. The neurons have an active computational role, but are also mainly the energy engine—the great bulk of the computation is done right at the storage site—in the synapses.
if we essentially have no idea of how it is that the neurons in our brain give rise to consciousness
We do have ideas, and this picture is getting increasingly clear every year. Understanding consciousness is synonymous with reverse engineering the brain and building a brain simulation AI. I suspect that many people want a single brilliant idea that explains consciousness, like an e=mc^2 you can write on bumpersticks. But unfortunately it is much more complex than that. The brain has some neat tricks that are that simple (the self-organizing hebbian dynamics in the cortex could be explained in a few equations perhaps), but it is a complex engine built out of many many components.
If you haven’t read them yet already, I recommend Daniel Dennet’s “Consciousness Explained” and Hawkin’s “On Intelligence”. If you don’t have as much time just check out the latter. Reading both gives a good understanding of the scope of consciousness and the latter especially is a layman-friendly summary of the computational model of the brain emerging from neuroscience. Hawkins has a background that mixes neuroscience, software, and hardware—which I find is the appropriate mix for really understanding consciousness.
You don’t really understand a principle until you can actually build it.
That being said, On Intelligence is something of an advertisement for Hawkin’s venture and is now 6 years old, so it must be taken with a grain of salt.
why should we expect a model that is accurate only to the nearest millionth of a picometer to capture us in enough fidelity to replicate consciousness?
For the same reason that once you understand the architecture of a computer, you don’t need to simulate it down to the molecular level to run it’s software.
A similar level of scale separation exists in the brain, and moreover it must exist for our brains to perform effective computation at all. Without scale separation you just have noise, chaos, and no computational capability to accurately simulate and predict your environment.
I will read them soon.
To stretch your analogy a bit, I think that words are the first approximation of what Hamlet is, certainly more so than a piece of paper or a bit of ink, but that the analysis cannot really end with words. The words were probably changed a bit from one edition or one printing to the next. The meaning of the words has changed some over the centuries. By social convention, it is legitimate for a director or producer of a classic play to interpret the play in his or her own style; the stage directions are incomplete enough to allow for considerable variation in the context in which the scripted lines are delivered, and yet not all contexts would be equally acceptable, equally well-received, equally deserving of the title “Hamlet.” Hamlet has been spoofed, translated, used as the unspoken subtext of instrumental music or wordless dance; all these things are also part of what it is for something to be “Hamlet.” Hamlet in one sense existed as soon as Shakespeare composed most of the words in his head, and in another sense is still coming into being today.
Likewise, your consciousness and my consciousness is certainly made up of neurons, which in turn are made of quarks and things, but it is unlikely that all my consciousness is stored in my brain; some is in my spine, some is in my body, in the way that various cells have had their epigenetic markers moved so as to activate or deactivate particular codons at particular pH levels, in the way that other people remember us and interact with us and in the way that a familiar journal entry or scent can revive particular memories or feelings. Quarks themselves may be basic, or they may be composed of sub-sub-subatomic particles, which in turn are composed of still smaller things; perhaps it is tortoises all the way down, and if we essentially have no idea of how it is that the neurons in our brain give rise to consciousness, why should we expect a model that is accurate only to the nearest millionth of a picometer to capture us in enough fidelity to replicate consciousness?
If a toneless machine read aloud the bare words of Hamlet with the rhythm of a metronome, would it really be Hamlet? Would an adult who understood 16th century English but who had no previous exposure to drama be able to understand such a Hamlet?
I think we would agree then that the ‘substance’ of Hamlet is a pattern of ideas—information. As is a mind.
Err no! No more than Hamlet is made up of ink! Our consciousness is a pattern of information, in the same sense as Hamlet. It is encoded in the synaptic junctions, in the same sense that Hamlet can be encoded on your computer’s hard drive. The neurons have an active computational role, but are also mainly the energy engine—the great bulk of the computation is done right at the storage site—in the synapses.
We do have ideas, and this picture is getting increasingly clear every year. Understanding consciousness is synonymous with reverse engineering the brain and building a brain simulation AI. I suspect that many people want a single brilliant idea that explains consciousness, like an e=mc^2 you can write on bumpersticks. But unfortunately it is much more complex than that. The brain has some neat tricks that are that simple (the self-organizing hebbian dynamics in the cortex could be explained in a few equations perhaps), but it is a complex engine built out of many many components.
If you haven’t read them yet already, I recommend Daniel Dennet’s “Consciousness Explained” and Hawkin’s “On Intelligence”. If you don’t have as much time just check out the latter. Reading both gives a good understanding of the scope of consciousness and the latter especially is a layman-friendly summary of the computational model of the brain emerging from neuroscience. Hawkins has a background that mixes neuroscience, software, and hardware—which I find is the appropriate mix for really understanding consciousness.
You don’t really understand a principle until you can actually build it.
That being said, On Intelligence is something of an advertisement for Hawkin’s venture and is now 6 years old, so it must be taken with a grain of salt.
For the same reason that once you understand the architecture of a computer, you don’t need to simulate it down to the molecular level to run it’s software.
A similar level of scale separation exists in the brain, and moreover it must exist for our brains to perform effective computation at all. Without scale separation you just have noise, chaos, and no computational capability to accurately simulate and predict your environment.
Thanks for the reading recommendations! I will get back to you after reading both books in about 3 months.