>(1) If one includes a purely contemporary physical ontology in with
> "physical explanation" (as most materialists and functionalists would
> want to do), then I think one has a good argument that HAL (or a person)
> is not conscious if that person is -fully- explainable in current
> physical terms.
Agreed. Maybe we're getting somewhere.
>(2) If one leaves out ontology, and just says HAL's/the person's physical
> side is -fully- explainable in -current- physical terms, then I think
> one has a good argument that (a) any consciousness would be
> epiphenomenal, and (b) there's no argument to believe he is conscious,
> aside from an argument from analogy from the premise of -our own- type-a
> consciousness, which argument isn't as strong as our confidence wrt
> other people's consciousness, and which argument is -very weak- for
> objects such as HAL with not only a different architecture (at any but
> the highest level), but different underlying hardware, the only
> similarity being behavior which is, as noted, completely explained
> without reference to type-a consciousness. (Might such a belief be
> properly basic, that is, held at least partially as a foundational
> belief without complete, independent evidential or argumentative
> justification? Wrt other people, I think that's very plausible [maybe
> even rationally necessary]; but for HAL, that seems very implausible.
> Hence, we rationally need a good argument, which we utterly lack.)
> However, you're very right in pointing out that this still appears
> -logically compossible- with even strong, type-a consciousness.
I think you said among all these words that you haven't a good argument
either for or against type-a consciousness for HAL (or person) when his
physical part is fully describable in physical terms and his behavior agrees
with natural law. If so, we really are getting somewhere. I think you are
suggesting in your last parenthetical statement above that it ought to be
permissible to assume what we want to regarding type-a consciousness in this
case. If so, we are in more agreement. This is what I have been trying to
say all this time. We don't have any good argument to decide the issue one
way or the other, and it all boils down to our personal beliefs on the
matter. *We can't convincingly argue either way on the matter.*
> I think those are EXCELLENT questions: pithy, relevant, and tough. If
>we accept current physics as the last word on mind, it ain't easy AT ALL to
>see how type-a consciousness gets into the picture. This is roughly why I
>made the two arguments above, and also the corollary argument that if a being
>has type-a consciousness, it is not fully explainable (causally and
>ontologically) in current physical terms. The corollary to the corollary is
>that, unless one accepts eliminative materialism for people (scientifically,
>no problems, but intuitively rebarbative), we need either to accept that
>physics is limited wrt its explanation of people (or any type-a being), OR
>that we'll need a somewhat new physics to deal with type-a consciousness (at
>least ontologically, very possibly causally/predictively too).
I was in agreement with you up until your OR at the end. It seems after your
OR that you have a much more optimistic view of the potential of physics than
I do. I cannot imagine how the issue of type-a consciousness could ever be
handled and fully explained in detail using any present or future versions of
physics. The domain over which physics presides excludes the whole
immaterial realm of things like type-a consciousness. This is why its
presence is impossible to positively detect or reject from the physical
behavior of an organism or machine. All we have to go on is our own personal
beliefs on the matter. We can't convincingly argue our way to one side of
the matter or the other. You seem to think that physics is capable of
deciding the ontological/metaphysical issue of type-a consciousness. I do
not. Even if physicists come up with their "holy grail" of a fully
physically satisfactory "Theory of Everything", that theory will inevitably
be misnamed if you wish it to account for such things as type-a consciousness.
You might as well have it account for the mechanism for how angels or genies
fly while you're at it.
> At this point (and
>dealing with your second question above), we are many orders of magnitude
>short of having the practical predictive power necessary to know if brains
>act wholly in accord with current physics (i.e., physics without recognition
>of type-a consciousness) or not.
This is a problem for any complex physical behavior. We are also far from
being able to tell if every single nitrogen molecule in the air in a
hurricane always follows the trajectory it ought to follow according to the
laws of physics. There is no hint here of the inadequacy of physics to
describe the behavior of a complex system in statistical terms though. There
is no hint (other than the limitations of calculational intractability,
intrinsic indeterminism due to quantum fluctuations, and to sensitive
dependence on initial and boundary conditions) that physical theory does not
adequately describe brain function at a reductionistic level. No neurolgist
has yet reported an instance of the non-conservation of energy or charge (or
any other violation on known physical law) in a brain. The only reason
current physics doesn't account for type-a consicousness is that such an
account is not part of the job description for physics--now or ever.
> If SO, then there'd be an argument either
>for epiphenomenalism (consciousness having no causal powers) or for a new
>physics that's new "only" in its metaphysical interpretation of the physical
>equations (like a new rival to the Copenhagen and Hidden-Variable
>interpretations of quantum mechanics -- different assessment of deep
>reality/ontology, but the same empirically predictive equations).
Why would there be such an argument? Strong type-aism, epiphenomenalism,
and rejectionism are all equally consistent with current physics as far as we
know. If current physics ever needs to be modified (and it very well may),
it will be on the basis of physical effects not consistent with the
predictions of the current physical theory, not on our speculations about
type-a consciousness. If you give a different metaphysical interpretation to
the physical equations without modifying them or their physical predictions,
then you have not modified physics, you have just modified your metaphysical
interpretations about the significance or meaning of the physics.
> If NOT,
>then the new physics would need at least -some- new math, too. (My guess?
>The latter. But that's just a guess.)
Why do you think that the behavior of brains will be found to violate current
versions of physical law? Brains operate using (mostly) chemistry. There is
no hint of any evidence that I know of that any chemical effect or reaction
is incompatible with physical law as we know it. In many (ok most) instances
the needed calculations are too intractable to do to actually get an ab
initio prediction of the behavior, but that is a technical calculational
problem, not a problem with the theory in principle. As far as we know, the
Standard Model of physics is complete in its description of *physical*
phenomena (at least up to an energy scale up to about 1000 GeV or so). The
regime where current physical law may need to be modified is far removed in
energy from the more mundane world of chemistry, and biology. This certainly
doesn't mean there won't be any new surprises here. Since the problems are
so intractable for such complex systems we certainly won't be able to
anticipate every effect (or hardly any of them), but what ever those
surprises are, I strongly doubt that they will be shown to violate the
Standard Model.
Just because I believe physics "as we currently know it" is complete in its
descriptions *in principle* of physical phenomena at mundane energy scales
certainly does not mean that I believe that it is ontologically (or even
causally) complete in its descriptions. I am not a materialist. Physics by
its very nature can not deal with nonphysical entities. To the extent that
such entities exist, to the same extent physics (now or ever) is incomplete.
Physics is compatible with many religions and philosophies (including both
Materialism and Christianity) that differ in their metaphysical/ontological
content precisely because it doesn't address such issues and is incomplete
regarding them.
> ... . Let's imagine this "type-a physics", a
> physics that completely incorporates type-a consciousness into its
> causality and ontology. Is it true that type-a consciousness is then
> wholly physically explicable? Yes! But because of the new aspects of
> the type-a physics, my HALlish argument no longer works -- complete
> physical explicability no longer eliminates type-a consciousness, it
> just calls the very same thing "physical". (Perhaps there are ne
> particles or fields: "nouons" [from Gk "nous", mind], or "soulons",
> or... :^> )
What you describe is not, IMO, physics. It sounds more like a new age
alchemy of physics and metaphysics.
> Indeed, presumably quite the contrary: now, given
> sufficient empirical knowledge about the object in question, we'd
> presumably be able to DERIVE the fact of consciousness (or not) FROM
> HIS KNOWLEDGE PLUS PHYSICAL LAWS, without needing introspective reports.
> (good thing, since maybe the object can't speak!) Cool. And bizarre.
> And utterly hypothetical, of course!
"Utterly hypothetical, of course!" is the key phrase here. I would also add
quite improbable.
David Bowman
dbowman@gtc.georgetown.ky.us