Consciousness Live! with Susan Schneider (S2 E8)

0:00 in Schneider so Susan for those who don't know you can you say a little bit about who you are and what you do sure so I'm the NASA chair at the Library of Congress and NASA I'm a philosopher I'm the director of the AI mind and society group at the University of Connecticut I'm also a cognitive scientist and I dabble a bit in astrobiology as well wow that's quite a lot there that's cool so this group at the University of Connecticut is a new thing that recently

0:32 started or how long has that been going on I yeah it just started a few years ago and I have several fabulous graduate students and great colleagues I really like the faculty at the University of Connecticut they're very smart ten everybody gets along really well no fighting no factions oh that's good I remember I was a student at Connecticut for I'm here and I can certainly concur with that the faculty are amazing and the students are great too there was a lot of much more philosophy departments were like that friendly and open and

1:06 kind of a sense of working together as opposed to like striving they're like be the room into all kinds of philosophy so you know we have some of the biggest thinkers in areas like Africana philosophy Chinese philosophy we're also really big in epistemology cognitive science logic yeah yeah everybody appreciates the contributions of others and we don't feel like we're in a tug-of-war yeah exactly and that's next year something coming from there to New

1:40 York it was kind of a sort of the opposite I'd say but anyway so I'm glad that you're there and that you're enjoying it and I want to talk to you obviously about this exciting new book that you have here which I have just finished reading for the second time Axl ate twice yeah well it was good and there were some parts I wanted to mull over a little bit more but this isn't a beer everybody and that's your story you're sticking with exactly okay yeah so this is a very exciting book a lot of things that you've been working

2:13 on in various different places sort of drawing two together you'd say a little bit about how you came to to write the book and how you conceived with the overall project of it yeah sure my dog is about to just lose it Teddy Oh Teddy I'll make it appearance he was on the last podcast you just in case I bore the crap I you I did show okay so um I get annoyed by all these technologists

2:51 all these AR experts who also think they're an expert on humanity's future right so I think it's important that we realize the that science is going really fast in all sorts of directions ranging from gene editing to data science and it's extremely important that we understand the proper social uses of the technology and what the technology could actually achieve for human flourishing and so the book is not comprehensive I

3:26 mean I develop different problems that I think people don't understand so I think people need to have a better sense of the whole conscious robot thing before you know these start giving rights to robots that just look human without looking inside of the system and determining if it's conscious I'm more skeptical about machine consciousness than a lot of the transhumanist so I take them to task right I also take people like John Searle to task and his

3:59 Chinese room thought experiment is prematurely dismissing the possibility of conscious machines so I take a wait-and-see approach and then half the book is on the future of the mind itself on whether we could say add microchips to the brain and still be us in any meaningful sense and the laughs substantive chapter is on eight questions that connect with my earlier work whether the mind is a program because I think a lot of people in this day and age of cognitive science and the internet often take that idea too far

4:35 and I actually argue that the mind is not a program okay people might find that funny because you know if my earlier books on the language of thought but as I point out just because the brain is computational and can be described computational it does not mean that the metaphysical nature of the mind is that it's a program for one thing of programs and abstract objects you know so there I have to talk a little bit about stuff and floss about that X like what is it to be an abstract entity no so I mean basically I wanted the book to

5:12 kind of straighten out some of the philosophical issues that I thought other books on a I don't do yeah and it does a great job of that but I mean it's it's the books like by boström and these other guys they focus a lot on on the kind of threats it AI may pose to us but they don't really deal with the human side of it or and actually the sociological or political side of it which you draw a lot of that kind of stuff out and that's overlooked a lot in this debate so I think that's really nice to have this kind of contribution at this moment yeah well it's funny that

5:45 you mentioned boström because he and Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil and so many others Stephen Hawking the former super money um they all suggest that the mind is a program so you know they have a philosophy but it's you know kind of techno taupe ian assumed the sort of teleology for the development of artificial intelligence is that it goes inside the head and it gives us immortality as sort of technophiles immortality and we can just become

6:21 cyborgs and not have any philosophical problems about the self or mine horse will continue you know so all these things are kind of taken for so right in a way I feel like there is a philosophy there I've been a transhumanist myself for years and I remember even in college being fascinated by the use of people like Ray Kurzweil but now I think oh my gosh I think this philosophy is horribly flawed I still look up the main tenets of transhumanism in the general sense you

6:55 know that we should use technology to increase the lifespan of humans and we should try to get past our limitations but I believe it has to be done very carefully and with the utmost reflection and understand what technology can and cannot achieve right and that's not really being done at this moment right there's not a lot of I mean there's some careful philosophers like to Chuck David Chalmers oh yeah work is pretty careful in this area but he's not white it's not as popular as like a Kurzweil or these

7:28 other you know other characters maybe in the in the mainstream and they're not as careful that I think is for sure yeah well Chalmers has done wonders with the problem of consciousness right and I think that's really the centerpiece of the book is what consciousness is and why we need to think about the things that can go wrong with the use of AI in the head and misunderstanding machine consciousness know um you know I owe a lot to that and I look forward to

8:04 I think he's writing a book on virtual reality so I'm hoping that takes off yeah he's trying to coin the term techno philosophy last I heard like neuro philosophy the use of technology to think about philosophy that I think that's good and I think it needs to be separated from what I call techno optimism you know which is this view that says that of course if we create artificial general intelligence 'iz or super intelligences they'll inevitably

8:37 be conscious beings and that we could merge with AI in our future right yeah that's one of the great one of the things that I really liked about the book is your wait-and-see approach because you know I lean towards biological naturalism that's sort of where my my hopes are but I'm willing to be convinced you know by the other side and I think about this stuff a lot so it's very refreshing to see someone who's like yeah well we don't really know let's think through both sides and see where the problems are as opposed to coming out strongly in favor of one or the other and then I mean there's a lot

9:10 that I wanted to ask you about but you brought up the program idea the mind is a program and so you argue against that so one of your main arguments I think you kind of mentioned just now is that programs are abstract kind of mathematical objects and that persons are spatial temporal and so there just seems to be some kind of category area error here on the on these guys as part thinking that we are abstract objects and instead you switch you say well maybe they might say we're implementations of programs right so that were a particular running of a program on some hardware and and so

9:43 there I guess I was a little more confused about what the objection was as far as I understood it the objection was like well they don't really tell us when it's the same or not question back so the dot the dialectic is you know the context of the discussion is radical enhancements whether it be uploading or gradually merging with AI through the use of several chips to replace parts of the brain and I'm the transhumanist

10:18 usually support the view that the human will become post human and the individuals still survive in virtue of the fact that the mind is a program and they're they support their view by appealing to things like the computational theory of the mind and cognitive science which a lot of philosophers of mind agree with and so that sounds good yeah it sounds legitimate it gives it an air of legitimacy okay but if you think about

10:52 the issue first of all let me just mention it philosophers of mind who are advocates of CTMS whether they be you know connectionist types or language of thought types or whatever they're not talking about persistence at all they're not talking about the conditions under which a given mind may survive to talk the talk of persistence I think there needs to be a lot more going on in terms of argumentation and if you think about what a program is

11:27 okay a program is a lot like a mathematical equation right and you know an equation is it located anywhere right I mean you can make an inscription of an intent equation somewhere but the equation itself is an abstract entity like Plato's forms okay so if you're a program you're an abstract entity now I think that's highly questionable may be a category mistake I mean somebody could

12:02 try to make the argument that they're an abstract entity but they should do it upfront and they have a lot of argumentation that they owe us you know it seems like we're concrete in fact I mean I think that one thing that's absolutely essential to a mind that would be a conscious being and consciousness itself seems to be in time it's a temporal phenomenon I think and you know our minds are capable of initiating change through our thoughts

12:36 and we seem as swallows in persons to be located in space-time now there are some really important and intriguing debates in physics about you know the nature of space-time and you know I'm not saying these are easy issues but I'm just saying it looks like just saying that the mind is a program requires a lot more Devaney than just saying well the computational paradigm and cognitive sciences really really interesting and important right okay well then the next boom is oh well what I meant to say

13:12 Susan is just that the mind is a program instantiation it's a particular that runs the program and my response to that is like sure I mean I don't really have a problem with that I mean look I you know I was an advocate of computational theory of the brain but could you please tell me then what is the thing running the program because you are beginning the discussion with an account of the persistence of a person so you had something that you were claiming about a person or mind and now you just tell me that it's this thing that runs a program

13:49 right I need to understand under what conditions that thing even survives and what that thing is I mean could that thing be in a material mind I mean in principle yeah I mean Hilary Putnam as a functionalist always said you know these functional descriptions can be satisfied by non-physical entities so I think that's just the beginning of the debate yeah right so I guess what confuses me about that is that is the move that you're attributing to the to those that side saying that it's the thing which runs

14:22 the program which is what the mind is where's why why wouldn't and I don't defend this view I mean I don't I don't really think of the mind as like a software that runs on the on the computer of the brain I'm not against that B I just don't really find it intuitive however why isn't the view that they would be defending more like it's the running of the program which is what the mind is and yeah it's ran on the brain and it could be run on other things perhaps but it's the it's the actual execution of the of the set of instructions which is what the mind is

14:54 as opposed to the thing which is running right okay so that gets into issues about the ontology of events right I mean so I think it depends on what your theory of events is then okay tell me what it is to execute program I mean you know if you look at the events literature it's on that the most success yeah I mean some people like Davidson and Quine um you know would take events in terms of just space-time region so we're back at the issue of what is that thing or a substance right and of course the

15:28 traditional objection to that theory of events was precisely to turned events into objects but then you could instead say that events are property instantiation so lewis and kim for instance had theories along those lines well property instantiation connects right up with theories of substance so one of the leading theories of the nature of substance simply bundles substances based on the properties so the bundled theory of substance says a problem an object is just a bundle of properties so I think these are all just

16:03 theories that are basically saying the same thing I see you're thinking the same thing about judges they're the same problem with Microsoft Word running on my Mac right now do you think there's an issue there as well or it seems pretty straightforward without having to well as deep into metaphysics as we are right now to say when a computer is executing the program versus when it's not okay so here's the thing the Mac is an artifact so gets into the metaphysics of objects and it gets into issues involving you

16:37 know how individuals understand you know human-made devices the metaphysics of objects which is super interesting super important I mean there are meta physicians who for entire books on the subject yeah by living things that you get into a very distinctive category there and the whole issue becomes very very vexing because we're now talking about conscious beings and we're talking about persons you know so when we're doing that I think it's all the issues

17:12 that you can imagine put together right and my point is that these are vexing questions so you know like we'd like to talk about solutions to the puzzle of personal identity or to the mind-body problem they're fun in philosophy class and when we're like drinking with friends would you bet your life on your solution look I Ellis trait that how you solve the issue is gonna make a difference to whether

17:49 you survive right right walk in like I could the beginning of the book I use the example of the Center for mine design like you walk in say it's 20 40 and you can choose from a bundle of enhancements what would you choose right and so the really metaphysics is the matter of life and death when it comes to AI so that's kind of why I wrote the book yeah it comes out very I mean that is a good point cuz a lot of times metaphor I feel like metaphysics ruins everything and and now it's going out to be quite

18:22 important who don't like metaphysics pay attention I love metaphysics it's like my favorite area really like I do philosophy of mind as a meta position I mean I just love it I love thinking about the fundamental nature of reality and I that infuses my work in applied ethics as well like a look well call me and you know applied Ephesus now you know but I mean really it's the metaphysics that is driving the book so on that point it seems like you're

18:58 really reluctant to take a deflationary account of the self seriously and and you and you can you like I've seen you address this point before and you know there's Buddhist traditions and even Dave in his section of the singularity paper where he discusses this brief briefly the issue the self basically says you know it's no different than when you go to sleep and wake up in the morning you're a different person basically if you take a certain view of the self so there's no fact of the matter and Parfitt obviously so but you see you seem like you want to resist

19:30 that you a lot of this hinges on there being an actual fact of the matter about whether you survive or not that's a super great question I really appreciate that and um so you do a right this is an important tradition in Western philosophy and within Buddhism and I respect it very much so I mean I talk about it in the book probably not as much as I wanted to but some transhumanists like I think Nick Bostrom sometimes footnotes that as a

20:06 possibility I think he's very sympathetic to it yeah ok so just to give you some background so I imagine many of your listeners are familiar with the work of Derek Parfit and you know the no self view and you know the idea here is that there's no persisting self at all I have a lot of philosophical problems actually with his position but I won't get into all that okay but in any case if there's no self then radical enhancement is a very real possibility

20:41 because you choose a future path based on other considerations so you might feel for example like you want to maximize super intelligence or that your successor whatever that thing is and see that's where it's like it sounds like he's talking the self talk but um that that being you know as a sentient being has a great existence and so you might want to choose a certain posthuman future for your successor that maximizes

21:15 conscious experience or something like that right right in so I mean just not to cut you up and we do that anyway now I mean if I I teach a 8 a-m logic class and if someone says co out drinking with me I say well I would love to but I don't want to wake up with a hangover in the morning and I don't really think of I mean yeah I think there's kind of sympathetic you know Sophie I think what I'm thinking is that that person the morning guy is gonna be really screwed if I go out tonight so let's let's consider the morning so fasting right because here's the way I would put it um

21:53 suppose I handed you picture of Richard Brown's kindergarten class I don't didn't go to kindergarten but I'm old my mom didn't let me go to school until I was legally required but anyways yeah so I get your point though first grade class and I suppose I'm a time traveler all right yeah and I go hey bruh shirt which is you and you go here okay and being an awful mean time

22:32 traveler I'm gonna go back in time get a wipe that little boy right off you know the planet with my laser gun sorry now you're from the future you're gonna feel like oh [ __ ] then I won't be here now I'm not sure if I would feel that way alright well I think that kids already gone you didn't survive I'm here now really walk the walk and all of your TIA and so the reason that I wrote this part of the book is so that people that

23:05 understand what they're getting themselves into because again it's a matter of life and death potentially one day so if you really are that confident in the no self view then you make your enhancement decisions in a way that is compatible with that I so I mean obviously the person that you're talking to now would cease to exist because of the continuity relationships between the kindergarten first grade person and me but and so that would give me a reason to say you know don't kill him but it's it's not that I would be worried that killing him is killing me it's kind of

23:40 the point that I that I'm thinking and so I'm not that confident I just think this is the view that neuroscience is pointing to that that deflation ISM about the self seems most compatible with what we know about the brain see now I don't understand okay so because nothing about neuroscience is gonna tell us whether there's a persisting self I mean you could take all the physical facts you could have a perfect understanding of you know the spatiotemporal most

24:12 properties in the universe and suppose you're you know a genius and you can process everything but you don't know the physical the philosophical facts about the self I don't think you're going to be able to infer from the location of properties in space-time whether there's something like a persisting self that I guess what yeah I just see what you're saying but I guess what I was thinking thinking was that from from the cognitive neurosciences we talked a lot about the self schema the self is just a kind of collection of beliefs about what you've been through

24:45 and where and so forth involving exotic memories of that sort of nature blah blah blah so what else is there I mean you know they're not body and then there's a representation of it and that's connected and it's part of the self schema but that's that's yeah now I hear what you're saying I hear yet I mean so I I would say though that the issue of our self-concept and the way we represent the self and body is extremely interesting and important but I don't think that's the very same thing as the metaphysics of personal identity

25:18 although it can inform it so for instance there is a famous neuroscientist who she was in the shower and she had a stroke yeah book of our insights Donna Williams right was that or no no I got our name wrong oh she was a book about this yeah it's called my stroke of insight yeah anyway her she claims that herself went completely offline due to the damage right and you can imagine being like a Zen master

25:54 meditator who gets to a point where he he or she doesn't experience the self or maybe you know several hours or ten minutes or whatever that's still a person in both of those cases the self concept comes along with the way our brain operates but it's not you know what is essential to the nature of the person I mean there are alternate theories here like

26:25 maybe the person is her brain or maybe the mind is just the soul right right as per Descartes and lots of world's religions so I don't think neuroscience is going to be able to prove whether we persist over time right I think religious debate I think that that yeah but I understand what I understand your point is well-taken I mean certainly there's lots to argue about here I guess I was mostly just asking about I mean I guess you're answering me by what you're

26:59 saying but I was just curious about why you resist the deflation a review so much because it does I know you talked about and it comes up but you're kind you're like there's always a further factor and it just seems like there's got to be a further fact about it but I just don't have those intuitions yeah so I'm just curious about why you do in fact it in the case we're talking about what the stroke of insight just who's like yes he was a different person that person was gone I don't think there was a person there I'm not it's not clear that there was a person there if the self schema has disappeared okay see ya

27:34 so you raised a lot of witches so in terms of the deflationary position I think it is in one of the most important positions on the debate over the nature of the person and what I encourage is what I call metaphysical humility right so when you're making these decisions to enhance should you ever have an opportunity you should do it in a way that is compatible with your own views and I think that it's disingenuous for techno optimists to as if it's in an

28:08 evident at that we should enhance and that we will survive so what is to do public service work in a way right okay and in a way I put my own views on the back burner I'm happy to talk about him but I don't really put them out there in the book in terms of like what I suspect about the nature of the person instead what I want to do is something I'm a little bit more confident in which is you can look at a position and show that it has

28:39 colonel problems and when you do that you can do it in a way that people from different vantage points agree about right get a lot of progress you can make a lot of progress in that way and so by showing that the self isn't a program for instance I can quickly illustrate the import of moving beyond just Elon Musk's pronouncements when he's talking about neural link I mean he's literally telling people and the media listens to him wholeheartedly does it gobble it up

29:13 Lata um you know and so do the Silicon Valley types and and you know it's that we should merge with AI because it's the way we can manage technological unemployment which is coming right oh yeah we can keep up with super intelligent AI so it's almost as if the AI companies are deciding what the future of the mind should be yeah that's that's pretty scary I have any problem with these individuals at all I work with them

29:47 every day I mean I hey I love you on he five one of those like fast ass Tesla I'm all over it all right face elevator Mars yeah I'm a geek okay but I mean oh my god the mind is not a commodity yeah you know people have to understand that Facebook and Google start merging us with AI to sell more products until you know data is what they want right right ultimate data's right and so if it's said to be

30:25 obvious that you'll benefit and you'll survive well no not if you don't continue to exist because you've made some stupid decision but you're right it could be that there is no persisting self like it's I mean it seems like I've on your own view though it's not something that can be scientifically decided so it doesn't seem like it can be decided at all so it is like yeah but don't give up on the mind just because of that I mean just like it

31:00 would be a bad thing if everybody took from this book the oh [ __ ] I can't figure out the answer so I'm just gonna enhance in these radical ways I mean that could be very realistic right because one of these views could be true I mean for example if you for many people who like cognitive science they probably like the idea that the mind is the brain and that their own survival depends on having a properly functioning brain yeah I like hanging yeah so um you know I just did this piece for the

31:36 Financial Times an op-ed where I said look you know follow the money here with these brain chips right follow the money okay I'm gonna give you I'm gonna give you calculating chip I'm gonna give you a working memory enhancement chip I'm gonna you know keep going keep going let you link up to your loved ones well how much space do we have in our heads put it are you gonna take out the appendix and add chips they're scooping out gray matter or if they're damaging gray

32:09 matter and what point do you dot you know no mine is the brain yeah baby that's right I mean with this like prosthetic hippocampus thing they're already like testing in humans and they're saying there's gonna be collateral damage like in implanting it's gonna damage things around not to mention replace the part of the hippocampus so yeah it's not clear what sparked you lose and then your that's it for you so there's an important question if your hippocampus is already damaged as is the case with the individuals right now right right I support the therapeutic use of anything we can to

32:42 make these people's lives better so if you don't have a working hippocampus and you get one but that's a good thing yes right and you know that alone is hopefully not going to stop the person from being the person they were from a metaphysical standpoint so I'm not objecting to the use of therapy although I can imagine that there could be a therapy that actually could cause substantive changes right

33:16 but then again it's up to the individual to make that decision for herself right she needs two others there is one what's at stake you know but if you want to know my views of the nature of the person I'll tell you I don't think we know jack right now here's what I think I think we don't understand the nature of consciousness right and so how do we know that the answer to that isn't bound up with the personal identity debate it

33:50 could be that persisting conscious moments are basic and we could string together some sort of survival in that way I mean if Richard Swinburne might have had that kind of a view I mean of course the problem is what happens when you go to sleep yeah exactly gaps it could be you know once we start enhancing our brains because people are gonna do it yeah they're gonna do it

34:23 they're gonna do it and you're gonna do it if it makes you better I mean you know it's cost-benefit analysis you know but uh maybe you'll discover the answer to the mind-body problem maybe yeah we'll be a lot smarter yeah sorry but 1v that doesn't get a lot of discussion which I kind of would like to bring up is the existential view there's so X stemming from you know extensionism start trend those guys so you on their view as I understand about what a person is is bound up with a project like an

34:57 aiming towards something in the future so in the in that sense as long as you sort of have the same goals so same projects you're the same person if those change and the kind of person changes what do you think about that kind of view I mean you don't talk about it a lot but I wonder it's a kind of a you know Sartre was famous saying I am what I am not tonight I'm not what I am so the idea is that see I mean you know it reminds me of Heidegger to write down something is always aiming into the future projecting into the future and you know design is what all of sorts are locating me you

35:33 know I mean I think that all these issues need to be debated right I mean I personally like I disagreed with Heidegger I don't know as much about syrup you can see my screen name is Nietzsche so you know I like he had no self person where the eye is the grammatical patient right yeah he's my favorite existentialist of course I don't know if he really was an existentialist but yeah I mean all these things are fodder for the sort of conversations people need to have about the future of announcement right it

36:06 doesn't really bring it home it's like if you don't want to die you need to think about personally in this context but so I mean I just still don't I wonder why you think that you have shown that we're not a program because if we're so let's suppose that way I say I am a program I'm an abstract object that's instantiated in some physical stuff here can be instantiated physical stuff for any situation yeah yeah well what do we are is the program so if you really are platonic in this sense you what what the program the

36:39 program is the program that it is because of its relation to the abstract thing so the to work together so you could still say on the program participation of the form issues and all kinds of stuff that that the thing is concrete in the instantiation view yeah say it's this if it's in the spatiotemporal continuum but the program view itself the first view which is just you know biting the bullet and slamming the person who's abstract and different

37:11 kind of yeast but I'm not one more just wondering why I'm not sure if I see that they're different well to be a program instantiation means that you're a concrete object of some sort so here is what is that substance or what are property instantiations that are implicated in running the program right so I guess what I'm sort of drawing on is your own work about how abstract objects individuate their concrete

37:44 things so this is from your philosophy of physics philosophy of mind stuff and I don't know why couldn't something like that work here that yeah if the program is part of what in the abstract part of its what part of what individuals the physical stuff which is implementing it so they're bound up in that way and they come as a package so that's saying well it's either one or the other yeah yeah well abstract it can individuate and become part of the essential nature anything right and so then you get right into that so I think personally what we

38:21 need to do if we want an object to be concrete is not have the abstract entities all by themselves individuate right there needs to be some other individuate or besides just numbers otherwise the issue does come up right that yeah yeah I mean it presumably if we are space your temporal beings and you know this gets into ontology of properties and stuff like that I mean I think that metaphysics in general needs to talk more about what is basic I I think you know you're not gonna say the

38:56 G word are you what's the G word or grounding nah no I was just gonna say you know like if you know really it's about disposition and causation and stuff I mean to me like I you know when I went to graduate school David Lewis was still alive and we were reading a lot of David Lewis who is great to think about you know but I just think that that kind of ontology is getting us into a lot of trouble and by that I mean an

39:29 ontology which rejects causation and changes fundamental thing I think there needs to be pushed and pulled to the universe and there is also a related you know issue in physics nowadays yeah well they reject causation at the fundament one would say I mean there's so much going on I mean it's really exciting you know like I met the Institute for Advanced Study a lot like I'm a you know I think I'm an office they're still in fact

40:01 it it's so neat to see what's going on in the domain of the nature of space-time right now because to some of these Streng theorists that I talked to and some of the people who do like Luke 1 gravity and whatnot they're taking in reality with almost be mathematical and that's supposed to somehow give rise to space-time right there's this talk of space-time emergence and whether it and you get people like max tegmark who argues in a recent book that reality is

40:35 mathematical right and so there is a debate about what reality is but to me see and I think it does connect with this mind is program issue because if reality is mathematical and we're like pythagorean's how do we get any change in the world and how is it even the case that consciousness exists I mean what this is the felt quality of experience I mean what breathes fire into the laws right that's the real

41:09 question and Stephen Hawking asked what brings fire into the equations right and I think that's a great question what is the underlying thing that is satisfying the program right running the program and what is it that brings about change in the universe yeah I mean I guess the way I understand modern physics is that the equations are describing patterns there's what there is a bunch of

41:42 patterns and we have a way of describing them mathematically and that's that's it and there's no cause and effect as a higher level property but at the basic level it's not there at least not me well that's it yeah that's a kind of Lois conception yeah you know I actually you know in my pincers in metaphysics I disagree with that kind of a view and it is important to realize that yeah these substantive issues about the minds nature do relate very deeply to debates about the nature of properties but the next book that my readers should delve

42:16 into would be Peter augers 650 page book on dispositions oh yeah I like his work no I mean is that literature you know just positions literature a link can you imagine these technologists reading that yeah these debates which are important to have and you know I think my two cents is that simply saying the mind is a program is super question begging it

42:51 puts you know it does say good mind is an abstract object and if you're gonna run that kind of an argument you do need to bite the bullet and start presenting an ontological case for that like a case that maybe draws from some of the work in physics or something I mean you know my experience with the physicists who make these claims is actually what they think abstract entities or causal which is not the same as it in the literature and philosophy

43:24 of mathematics which defines an abstract entity is a causal and unchanging so there's a lot to talk about there yeah yeah super I'm a super interesting stuff yeah ok well I wonder maybe if I could switch to switch topics lately because they're talking about the self is a tyre sauce it's exhausting for me but I understand that it's important but so I want to talk about your views on consciousness and intelligence in particularly you you make a kind of in

43:57 my mind a strong claim saying that to have a mind requires consciousness so that if we build AI but it lacked consciousness I guess the implication will be they don't have minds at all and wouldn't have any kind of moral standing because you also sort of associate more standing with having the conscious experience and so I kind of wanted to press on that a little bit because I guess I have a different feeling it seems to me that a super-intelligent or even just our normal intelligent AI without any consciousness it's still would be wrong to stop it from doing the

44:31 things that I wanted to wanted to do or intended to do it seems like there's there's a kind of sense of autonomy that you would violate which doesn't have anything to do with causing it pain or discomfort but seeing so I just wonder what you what you're what you're feeling why why you go for this strong route equating consciousness with mine didn't that's really interesting i mean so i guess my mclaughlin feels that way and yeah he suspects that that AI is highly intelligent should actually be in that moral compass where like you know we

45:05 normally put sentient beings i mean so just to kind of clarify i mean something can be morally significant in all sorts of ways and not be conscious right but yeah when you start talking about autonomy and the being isn't conscious that's that's an interesting move right it's a different move so I just think that there's been a long tradition to think of sentience or consciousness as being constitutive of mindedness and that just strikes me is a good path

45:43 because it does help with the ethics for me when it comes to these issues I think epochs hasta could burst yeah I agree yeah right like I wrote the book because of being the impact AI couldn't have on human flourishing and so I think we start calling things minded that aren't conscious we could potentially make all sorts of mistakes on the ethics and legislation front where we consider machines that are not conscious to

46:18 deserve save rights or consideration in a utilitarian calculus sentient needs so but why would that be a mistake so if you're a preference utilitarian and these things have preferences shouldn't they be counted I mean so they wouldn't be maximizing happiness per se but certainly a some versions of utilitarianism sort of seem to straightforwardly imply that they should count and certainly Dean ontology I would say straightforwardly says yeah okay so walk me through this because if you're worried in it you know

46:52 isn't the idea that you want to maximize the pain and pleasure of the being so the preference you till eternity and actually that's their whole point is to get away from that and to say what I want to drink remise what they prefer like what it is they what they desire the idea though I mean I know that they it's about preferences but isn't it because these it feels like something for these beings that their preference is even matter I mean I imagine this you didn't anticipate that right no but it's compatible with it is I agree right but they did it because they want to avoid

47:25 weird things about masochist or whatever you know say they can't you're saying you don't want to just maximize happiness but great I agree I agree with you and and this might be a situation where a moderate revision to the theory could be very useful right right certainly against the intent I mean you know like you know philosophers we couldn't talk forever about what has preferences we can get lost in a language game right and it's late in the day and we probably don't want to hear

48:02 is what deserves that special world consideration and I think giving even a superintelligence the same consideration in terms of rights or protections that we give a conscious being even if it's my dog Teddy the poodle is not right it's not a good idea it doesn't feel like anything to be that super intelligence unless we find out it's conscious right no I'm just let's just assume they're not for

48:35 the signal business yeah it's the capacity for something to be sentient that causes us to be careful the way we treat it because it can feel a range of emotions right but that's part of it but it's also rationality and goal directedness and autonomy are also a part of what we consider I mean so I agree what you're saying if I want to get moral standing to a to a statue or something like that and and treat it that way but something that's as cognitively sophisticated as we are that can move that has its own goals I mean

49:10 you know it's not just a stimulus response machine this thing is in the world and behaving in ways that are similar to you and I but but without any feelings or emotion I just it doesn't seem to me like a mistake to give it yeah good no I mean these are the kind of debates that we need that people need to have because see the point one point in the book in the chapters on machine consciousness is that consciousness and intelligence can in fact come apart in the artificial arena right synthetic beings we have a kind of correlation

49:42 thesis I mean with with them biological being right yeah you know we believe rightly that there's a correlation between you know the sophisticated cognitive systems we see in non-human animals some of them and humans and consciousness like we rightly infer gee you know my dog it's you know and general intelligence it has multimodal representation sensory experiences it feels like something to be it and so

50:15 we're used to that right but I call it the cute and fluffy fallacy like we because you can already turn on you know go go go on Google and just Google Japanese Androids and you will see very cute like Androids it's creeptastic so you know they're not sentient they're in fact not even intelligent yet like give the people working on them they're amazing but they're not working on the AI come they're working on the physical

50:50 component but I mean just because something looks you know cumin or you know looks fluffy or whatever I mean you know the field of Robotics is very creative doesn't mean that it deserves the same legal protections I mean for us to be at moods I think we really have to consider what it feels like from the inside to be nothing so I guess maybe the problem is or not the problem but one of the things that we're sort of crossing pads on is that you I'm not suggesting they get the same

51:26 consideration but that they should have some consideration that it still seems like not like you'd be doing something wrong if you turn them off for arbitrarily or if they said if you said I want you to you go to the Android store as you do in your book and say I want somebody to clean my house and then the super the intelligent thing says I'd rather not clean the house I prefer to lift rocks or I don't know whatever it still seems like it would be morally wrong to say no you're gonna clean the house what effective whether they're

51:58 conscious if we can acute the fluffy phallus if it's not conscious if it's conscious absolutely but I mean otherwise it's just us applying you know aren't they like biological arena to something that is no different ethically speaking then alphago in other ways though I mean it could be a very important object I mean these are interesting ethical questions I mean some like if you go into being

52:30 environmental ethics literature for instance I mean some people will suggest that state parks have instrumental value or something like that I mean which are the kind of good thing these people should be having highway yeah I mean I feel guilty when I stop Limbaugh from going room by one freak now you I'm sorry yeah tragic value I'm sorry I'm tired I've had like you have a giant mug of coffee so yeah your coffee your head I'm not like number three already but I mean I just I feel guilty when I

53:03 stop Roomba from going where Roomba wants I don't think it's because it's cute and fluffy I just think because there's a sense in which it's autonomous and you should respect autonomy not autonomous it's there's a sense in which it is autonomous it decides where it wants to go on its own no one tells it how to drive around the house so in that sense it's got some autonomy you know I was just thinking as we were talking about like how you define autonomous weapons and and yeah I'm sure sure in in a

53:37 really watered-down sense you know but that that that doesn't make me think it has right clear deserves right yeah so I guess you're say so you think that to have any important sense of autonomy had to be conscious well mm-hmm autonomous weapons aren't conscious and they're important they're scariest morally important I know it yeah but right well to be to figure in the category of sentient beings you know I mean so ethical theories traditionally have

54:15 special concern for beings that can feel pain and whatnot no I think to go back to what you mentioned earlier about rationality and I think you mentioned deontology a really good point and I think again see we didn't expect these things to come apart we didn't expect the capacity to be sophisticated intellectually and consciousness to come apart and they might right we that's really really interesting for theories that argue that we deserve you know

54:49 legal protections because we're rational right and we certainly will not be I mean if AI continues if we develop general intelligence we're not going to be the most rational beings on the planet because I bet new AI if we develop them properly could overcome a lot of cognitive biases that we overcome and even be war rash nuts and you might imagine them debating whether we have moral standing because yeah that we can feel but what they're not rational I can

55:23 imagine super intelligent non conscious beings saying to themselves we're the ones with the moral standing because look how rational we are and look at these guys they're like ants so who cares if they feel I mean you know maybe ants feel but a lot of people still move my other way to build a highway so it seems rationality is something that's important and the you know there's a I'm writing another book on you know the space of intelligences like our place in the space of intelligent systems and it's on all these issues I think that

55:58 this is a really rich area for discussion and you know you're just hitting all the key issues here from an ethics down point and also I'm you know consider the way we treat non-human animals you know we are constantly justifying our behavior by pointing at the fact that we're more intelligent right but if a is are able to overtake us in the intelligence department we really need to start paying attention to

56:31 really exactly I think the key thing here is sentience yeah in content conscious experience and there's some interesting debates in neuroscience right now about the neural basis of consciousness and some people like Chris Taub Koch you know with this hot zone theory are saying really what makes us conscious beings is the sensory areas of the brain right yeah and so if they don't have that they lack if we don't design something you manage and they'll

57:03 lack that I mean I guess I would quibble about cognitive consciousness and I think there is a oh yeah a phonology of thought and those sorts of things yeah you're you're you're interested in that you're a higher-order percent right I I spend some time thinking about higher thoughts yeah really interesting debate and like I I was a reading Joseph's book ah great yeah yeah I grabbed it yeah I really enjoyed that a lot yeah yeah he's that's it yeah that's a that's a good book and he's more I

57:38 mean I I guess my position like with all these things is I will defend it if someone attacks it but that doesn't mean that I really am a true believer like I don't really think of myself as a higher-order guy I think of myself as like so many people misunderstand it and berate it that yeah I will defend it and it could be Joseph's book really helped me and I look forward to reading more of your papers it's always so hard to find time wait like in terms of personal identity right I mean I I just feel very strongly that we probably are such finite beings that we don't know the

58:13 answer to the question about the nature of persons so we have to take very seriously the whole range of views yeah that's where I see my job and and I hope I'm intellectually honest about that you know yeah yeah but if you have like late at night or whatever I probably say like two nights a week I'd be voting for perfect okay yeah I'd be like there's no person there's no self this is rubbish okay mystical and I'm like you know there's a creator you know this is all

58:48 too weird we're conscious the fact that we're conscious implies that there's some really weird [ __ ] going on in the universe and and look how confused we are about space-time what about the other two days of the week I think about this stuff the rest of the time I'm drinking okay that's a that's a healthy lifestyle I approve of it I wonder if I could ask you good since we're talking about consciousness obviously my what if I could ask you about your wait-and-see

59:22 approach because you you kind of criticizes both the Chinese room and also the dancing fading qualia arguments in different ways and I guess I don't really yeah we were wanting into a protracted argument about our debate about this but I think it was sort of wit by really quick that you say oh well the system's replies and that kind of takes care of Searle and and and end of sorry it doesn't sound like that's really the end of story because what are the your main argument there I thought it was that there's a fallacy and the dog agrees

59:56 with what I'm saying obviously Teddy's great smart I can tell but you're like there's a fallacy here that Searles reasoning depends see he's agreeing that sort of argument depends on the fact that well since he doesn't understand it then the system doesn't understand it is that a fair way of characterizing your criticism of him first before I'm right yeah yeah yeah I know Teddy doesn't like Cyril after what's been in papers I could say naughty a jerk of a person like that he's my professor oh you have

1:00:33 a class is what they're really I walked out of his class third week so I didn't like the vibe Wow okay I didn't know that ain't known as famous though I probably have put up with died you know I was in him I wasn't a philosophy major Wow yeah yeah I put up with the little obnoxiousness ya know that's the mark I mean you can get before muddies written more than from interacting with them right super clear you know yeah so um okay so I like the Chinese room with students I like bringing that up a lot and the thing is though yeah I think

1:01:06 something like the system's reply works but not not in the context like I don't think that the Chinese room is a conscious system so what I'm thinking is if you ran something like a Chinese room in the context of a very sophisticated AI so you'd have a very complicated room right you could still do it you could still run that thought experiment then I think the system's reply works so you know at some point you know these sophisticated systems may very well be capable of consciousness right and in

1:01:41 the case of the brain seems like what's going on right I mean the brain can be decomposed functionally into constituent parts now what parts are responsible and how does it work I mean it seems to be consciousnesses is synergetic synergistic relationship between various components of the brain right right so but why isn't it so what what the Chinese room argument which I find kind of pretty convincing actually I don't really find the system's reply all that

1:02:14 convincing but so the kind of way I understood it was that the reason why it matters whether Searle understands it or not is because he's the CPU so he's whatever system it can be a synergistic or distributed whatever you want but there's a system in there which is doing the symbol manipulation and that's supposed to be the thing which is understanding the Chinese so if he's doing what the brain is conscious like but there's a system in the brain that's conscious there's a neural correlate of

1:02:48 consciousness which is one assumes kind of a minimal set of activations which are conscious you know this gets into the murky issue of the neural basis of consciousness right yeah so I mean surely there are different parts of the brain that together give rise to consciousness and that's not to say there's not something else I mean maybe it's because there's something you know going on we don't understand it's not physical I don't know but I mean you

1:03:20 know you've got the brainstem which is necessary for wakefulness and alertness and then you've got arguably the thalamus which loops and you know this is found a cortical loop which has been implicated in like the global workspace you know and then there's the sensory hot zone and then there are different areas of the brain which if they're offline cause all sorts of tweaks to consciousness and may actually be part of the neural basis like the colostrum right okay the debate it's a mess remain for sure yeah yeah yeah

1:03:57 um indicating again this dance of metaphysical humility but I mean just if you took out if you say isolate one part of the brain like say the claustrum and you go well the claustrum is not conscious so therefore the brain isn't conscious that would be a problematic line of reasoning right so yeah with the Chinese room thought experiment the reasoning is that Searle I eat a CPU guy is not conscious so therefore the

1:04:33 whole thing isn't conscious and see that's not correct but it is correct the person who is the thing which is supposed to be do so if it's if you say yeah you take out the brainstem and you still conscious yeah but you know I like the frontal cortex more than the hot zone so I guess I'd say I'd pick on that but whatever the system in the brain that it is unless you think I don't mix maybe you do I'm not sure unless you think that the entire brain is the minimal ncc then there's gonna be some unless you think that there's got to be some brain activity activations or

1:05:08 whatever and if you take that if you say well that's not conscious then the brain is not conscious I mean so there is something in there which it this kind of reasoning works on and the Chinese room is trying to pick up on that look whatever it is is doing it's not just manipulating symbols according to syntactic transformations yeah because that doesn't do it that doesn't generate it to go back to the brain analogy in the sorry it's the like the end of the day so see the thing is Searles carrying out the causal activities so nothing's

1:05:42 been taken out if you will like the objection is merely that the homunculus inside the box isn't conscious right right all right yeah I don't I don't find that compelling at all because you know activities I mean surely we all agree I mean well maybe we don't but they different components of the brain help to see turn eyes and give rise to conscious experience and there's no homunculus in there right right

1:06:18 what so you know I mean to me it it I'm not I don't find the argument compelling right but it's not so much that it's a homunculus it's just that the causal work that's being done doesn't generate the understanding but I mean I don't see why it doesn't I mean the just because the neuron one neuron or one mini column or the claustrum doesn't itself understand does it mean that the brain

1:06:51 as a whole doesn't understand and similarly for the Chinese room so but if the way the argument proves too much because if it's right then it should prove that the brain is unconscious yeah it what would if what it's doing is merely manipulating symbols then yeah that's right well I think you can do the whole thing I mean I know Searle is actually kind of sympathetic to connectionism but it's really about you know any kind of causal relationships whatsoever that can be executed by something at a lower level and it's a

1:07:26 little bit well but the thing at the lower level is unconscious now go so anyway right yeah yeah and you could do that from the brain and so if the argument proves too much right yes damn it's mysterious why we're conscious you're absolutely right well that is true but let me just try one more time I know it's late and we don't so I don't want to make your day even worse by dragging this out but your emotional support dog every night right hip as a

1:08:03 brutal steady it does seem like okay so if suppose there for argument's sake we have a hot zone I wouldn't say it's in the posterior region of brain but anyway suppose there is one and you figure out what the cause and effects of it are and then you duplicate those and then it doesn't result in consciousness then that's an objection that's not the kind of objection you're making so if you if you whatever system in the brain

1:08:35 is let's imagine responsible for conscious experience and you duplicate the causal interactions of that sense system and don't get consciousness then you have a problem for the way you're duplicating it which I thought was the basis of your chip test and all that other stuff I thought this was sort of yeah it's close to the chip test I mean but that's what the Chinese room is really getting at I mean as I understand it is you're duplicating them the way this thing works the fact that it's a guy doing it doesn't imply some monkey litter is amore something like that he could be a distributed system I mean

1:09:07 there could be happy conscious if it was a more sophisticated system I'm saying that no I know yeah right so you can make the system as complicated as you want but I think it would be consciousness if you if you wired it together right I mean I but I agree with you but my point is so I'm not trying to convince you and yeah but I'm just trying to get at the objection that you have to the to the complicated Sanskrit room like forget Chinese Miss dispense man so you know there's a complicated

1:09:41 system it's as complicated as the brain there are 40 billion people in there 86 billion actually passing around instructions it's a super super complicated room the central processing unit of that system doesn't understand Sanskrit and it seems like an objection interactions are right and I mean timing in the brain like you know eight you know 100 millisecond levels all that stuff you know could be very important

1:10:15 for consciousness what that's right it's conscious and I think the problem was that Searles Chinese room the argument form was that one component wasn't conscious something that was carrying out the requisite özil steps but had lacked this additional layer of consciousness and i think that that's not a good argument form you could run it on the human brain

1:10:50 right I mean you could talk about part of the brain carrying out the requisite steps but the matter itself not being conscious right you could do that right you just you have to assume it I actually wrote a paper on just that idea actually yeah so I mean I just don't think that that kind of argument form works because no I agree it doesn't work I just don't think that's the point of the argument that's kind of the point I'm making so I hadn't that's a bad argument form I just don't think that's what the Chinese room is doing oh but

1:11:24 Sir grants that he's doing the cause of work he cards an and he's so he's doing the cause of work for the system as a whole to process the Elgar in the minute needs to process right but then he's saying but I wasn't conscious but his consciousness is actually irrelevant to the program itself and I'm saying it's the instantiation of the program at the causal level like the causal components which is the essential ingredient and of

1:12:00 course that being said I hope no listeners assume I'm suggesting that anything like a Chinese room as so raised it could be conscious consciously is it extremely complex phenomena that you know I don't think any of the AIS that we have nowadays are conscious either in the sense that we you know non-human animals are conscious that is the star of this show yeah okay so I guess we just have to

1:12:33 have to think about it more yeah dude oh I'm so tired I mean it could be bit no it's not right yeah no you're yeah hi I understand but it's okay so let's let's table that because I do want to talk about aliens we haven't even got to the aliens you know I'm teaching a class called life in the universe this is a talking about some of your work obviously because I think it's super interesting but what are the things that comes up a lot in the book is the possibility of designing consciousness out so you suggest maybe super intelligence well they'll see it that's kind of the time everything's

1:13:07 automated let's get rid of it and then the most advanced aliens you suggest are probably gonna be compost biological that's not to say that all of them or that there's no biological life but the most advanced most advanced aliens ones capable of contacting us and be a post biological so I guess I was a little bit curious about that cuz I didn't really see the out loading as all that serious because a lot of times what we do when we automate things is use free up our time to think about other things we have super intelligences you know

1:13:44 either here or elsewhere in the universe that they maximize conscious experience they don't make decision so the way VC approach was just raising various scenarios to get people to open their minds about it to not stay so with respect to the alias to though you think it's gonna judge sophisticate me computation because I don't think it is sorry I miss that last part oh yeah I don't think consciousness is an inevitable outgrowth of sophisticated computation right yeah so I thought

1:14:19 maybe I misunderstood then because I thought you were saying that it's most likely that intelligent life which is capable of reaching us would be non conscious as opposed to merely like here's a possibility no I said that it's more likely than not that the most sophisticated alien civilizations would be post biological ok that's not to say that they won't be conscious that's a

1:14:53 further step ok but I introduced the possibility that the AI may not be conscious so that's what I'm doing yeah yeah I hope that you know in here's this is why philosophy is so important I hope that civilizations mull over implications of synthetic intelligence and consider like you're going to upgrade your brain you also should bear in mind what it does to consciousness right yeah okay so I guess I wasn't

1:15:27 missing I was joining those two things together in a way that I probably well I mean I think also what happens a lot with my work is and people don't realize this when you write op-eds and when you know the media interviews you they choose the headlines right and yeah written up I mean I didn't even grab places like the Daily Mail or whatever I'll wake up in the morning and there'll be some article you know then I said something I never even talked to them on

1:16:03 the phone buddy okay really you know that's all the fun that was like mind uploading a suicide or something like that when I woke up to that I mean I wrote the up in and they track the headline that was brilliant because if I've written up so much and it was that headline was so worthy but of course technically I'm not saying that it definitely is suicide of the

1:16:39 mind tomorrow with AI I'm saying don't know but I don't actually agree with the argument to mind our program exactly so have you ever read this book blindsight you know this uh you know Kindle yeah really good yeah it's really good but it's I don't want to spoil it too much right if you haven't read I won't mention too much but it's about aliens that are non conscious but highly intelligent oh man open down the Queen it's a great it's a great book it's one of my one of my favorites oh I teach that philosophy

1:17:14 in science fiction class all the time I love it I've never got the teacher class like that sounds like it would be fine oh oh yeah nice really like it yeah yeah I'll bet yeah exactly how much I want to watch films and glass yeah about the material I almost like it's a non sequitur by I didn't want to take a class like just using episodes of black mirror like just show one episode in the class and then discuss it afterwards some of them are too like grim I think I'd get complaints for saying you know a lot of classes this

1:17:49 aren't Kure I think that that is such a great idea I did I did mean to teach a whole class on black mirror but I cheated and did a whole bunch of other stuff too but I did teach some black queer stuff Wow it's really rich man they were so into it watching black mirror like a couple years ago when it came out I mean they were watching it like crazy and important you know to use science fiction to convey be imported these issues it's like the lingua franca like no matter what field someone's from

1:18:22 talking about techno philosophy you know it's like they can be from AI with no background philosophy whatsoever you know they can be some cognitive science you could just go man this was in iRobot this is it you know the robot stories or something like that people get it yeah exactly I mean those kinds of yeah exactly so this is there's a lot of good to work there but so until you show the post biological alien bit there's no

1:18:56 commitment on your part where they're being non-consciously like you assume they'll be conscious I don't know how these are gonna play out I mean well you know like I say in the book that if you built like you know a functional eisah worth of the human brain if you could if it was actually technically possible right then you you'd end up with a conscious being right now maybe somewhere somebody will do that right and now you should have done it already I

1:19:27 mean I guess I don't think I obviously I don't really think if you build a functional high somewhere if you'd get a conscious being this kind of build pays off the chip testing and the act the back tests are do you call it to a CT I don't know what you call it how you pronounce the acronym we forgot I'd okay but I honestly I forgot what it even stands for consciousness I think what is it artificial consciousness test oh we're doing book interviews dude it's

1:20:06 like [ __ ] I got whatever oh yeah yeah you're on the next thing already yeah but so I just wonder what you would say to someone like a skeptic and of a skeptic like me who says you know there's no amount of that kind of stuff which is going to get at the consciousness most mostly because of Chinese room sorts of considerations I don't think any amount of passing anything like a Turing test is good enough to like I think it's good enough that we should give them the benefit the doubt like obviously your complex systems I err on the side of caution for for ethical reasons but not because of

1:20:40 metaphysical reasons but but you think that this is really the best way of getting at sort of actually whether they're conscious or not is by doing a combination of chip tests and a CT test oh yeah yeah because okay so think about it okay it's not untenable to think that an AI could fool us yeah you know verbally sophisticated enough and it could look human uh I think you know if you just look at even you know our iPhones they're getting better the stare

1:21:14 is getting better an Alexa right money pouring into it I think 10 years from now they'll be like sophisticated conversations going on and people will be confused yes pair that up with the Japanese androids it's like jeez you know there's gonna be some weird stuff coming down really weird stuff right so the ACT test i think is necessary because especially the orangey stage before the systems have all that data right we need to figure out if it feels

1:21:49 like anything to be that AI otherwise people need to be giving rights away them you know marrying a eyes they're gonna be leaving their money you know and it would be sad i think it's disingenuous for you know anybody selling the product to put forward the idea that it feels like something to be those behavioral tests are essential the chip test is cool I mean I I don't know if I talked about I don't think again it's just simple observation really it's just that if humans start putting chips

1:22:24 in their head say to deal with brain disorders so way well it's already happening like with Ted burger we talked about with the artificial hippocampus suppose we start replacing areas of the brain responsible for the neural basis of consciousness and by the way Richard this I think is a great way to learn something productive about the neural basis of consciousness I mean if somebody has a defect you know and I mean you know the only way to help them is to put a chip in their hands then that's an ethical experiment right so if we do that and if we find that people's

1:23:00 consciousness you know is normal right I mean depends on the context what's going on but you know then I think we can infer that chips are the right stuff in principle that kind of chip design that substrate and that if we put those chips into an artificial intelligence with the right sort of architecture it may very well be conscious right but then you wake up call to be careful the way they're creatures yeah I got I wonder so what what do you mean by if we can tell

1:23:35 that their consciousness hasn't changed because it's not clear to me that you really could actually tell because they if the thing is functionally equivalent then they're gonna say all the same stuff but that I mean they could have some kind of weird form and neglect they could have some I mean like Oliver Sacks four books on this stuff I mean there's some deficit I mean look about look at blind sight look at blindness denial Oh God split brains I mean no sir

1:24:09 spouses apparently didn't notice right and you stick them in clinical settings and you devise clever ways I mean it may take a while to figure this out but we haven't figured it I mean with the split brain stuff there's still I mean there's this conference at NYU just recently where they were still to this day trying to figure out the right side conscience or is it you know do we mention him earlier his view is that the right side is an unconscious process or yoke to the conscious side of the brain the other side is no there's a consciousness over there we have no clue on how to answer that I mean but I think we can find deficits that was all I'm saying I mean

1:24:44 I agree with you see this is because again science is not philosophy yeah these are really philosophical issues but I mean in that case it's a delicate dance balancing the scientific and the philosophical considerations and that's like super exciting – what kinds of discussions ya know I have a PhD student writing a thesis on this topic right now Oh awesome jemelle Salsbury yeah I'll keep a lookout for that then yeah she's terrific yeah but but so but so the blindside case is Anton syndrome there's there

1:25:19 deficits that are findable because there's deficits that are neural anatomical but even the case we're imagining there's no neuroanatomical deficit like the thing is doing all the same work so all the same behaviors will be produced one assumes and it's not clear that one would notice a change in so if you in my views are the way I think of it do you replace my visual cortex I'm not going to have any conscious experience I don't think that I would have any conscious I'd be so if I go around saying that I do have conscious experience it just because all the causal connections are there that's

1:25:51 what mr. property essences again Richard honestly like my back too the debate over dispositions and david lewis because he I think what's happening here is and that's so hard for people not philosophers that I understand I think and that's why I need to go into this in the book because I just thought oh boy right but I mean some people will claim that you can add all the dispositions and just satisfy those dispositions by a non conscious system right I have a

1:26:25 different view of property it's more like um John Heil Charlie Martin it's like a two-sided view right I don't think you can Teddy sorry oh it's fine I like what he said probably time for you to feed him I just gave him a bunch of cheese okay he's happy but you know if you have something which does all the cause of work it also has that same categorical nature as well

1:27:00 if they're tight areas so yeah manuscripts – I didn't finish because I I know I service should make an argument for I mean I have a sort of different approach to that it's you know I just haven't had a chance but John John haidle and Charlie Martin have done related papers and I really appreciate that – sort of properties as powers or yeah disposition listview I mean it's just I think the essence here is dude I

1:27:36 don't really see disposition ality in Category City is coming apart I see okay little bit many people disagree with that you know right now there's a you know tendency because of the influence of the bluest and diem Armstrong and others to think that consciousness and its causal powers can come apart right so but that's I mean makes this whole argument depend on a kind of a very controversial metaphysical theory so the chip test surprisingly turns

1:28:12 – really only work if you take a certain view of properties which I mean I have a debate with Eric Schmidt's cable on it on his blog and so you couldn't listeners can read what we said there I'll put a link to it I think another consideration I mean I just noticed up on properties important and I want people to think about it but I also think that it would be a dystopian world you know an authoritarian dictatorship it would like

1:28:47 like a eric set up this case you know we're suppose the chip makers bypass you know the information it would be your brain would have we're like you noticed a deficit and you know the chip causes your brain to act as if it's conscious i mean it gets real weird right it's like Eric come on FDA I mean you know what anybody want to do that and then that ships not isomorphic anyway to what the

1:29:20 brain is doing right I mean I'm talking about a situation that could happen in North America I mean they're already developing brain chips and for anything to get to the level of human clinical trials it's gonna be a pale version of the original part of the brain anyway right exactly probably bypass mechanisms I mean yeah you know these thought experience are blast right I understand they're so fun to talk about but we have to kind of push them aside a little bit

1:29:54 to get the ethics work done and they hear it yeah no I agree with that but I guess I was just more going for like you get the neural stuff doing what it was doing but it's done by a chip then you know I was always my view was in the river of gradual replacement there's gonna be a point at which enough replacement no consciousness and yet yeah be conscious I agree with Chalmers yeah but I don't understand why because Chalmers his argument is not all that great actually since is basic whole argument is just it would

1:30:29 be too weird and then what about change blindness what about partial report a lots of weird stuff and actually checks I just got him to change his mind there's a footnote in his book where he says oh gee I guess I can change – what are you gonna do so there are changes that we don't notice and it's not all that strange to be having something there blinking in and out and so he does retract a little bit of what he previously said haha so I don't think those arguments that the empirical work I think is gonna overturn those arguments while we're late and even if you're a category if you like category city it also is sensible

1:31:06 for you to say that the category and the disposition sort of correlate in a lawful way yeah well you wouldn't get these weird scenarios where you have something that's a causal Isum work and the counter guru sitting has shifted in fact you know if you look at the traditional debates and the category City literature you know people like Simon Blackburn and that paper filling in space that's a good paper yeah you know he talks about those switching cases as endorsements for the category City view and their proponents that

1:31:38 categorically do usually deny that it would be Noma logically possible so you know I'm here really I mean from a precautionary standpoint to get back to the issue the issue is when do we decide that ships might underlie conscious experience from a precautionary standpoint if we see no effects in the context of human tests then we better apply the precautionary principle to the AIS that are made of those tips on the chance which it's not even a remote

1:32:13 chance it's a significant chance that they may be conscious from an ethical standpoint I think we need to kind of that's the money shot the money shot humans or Shane and more generally the flourishing of sentient beings yeah no I agree with I agree the cautionary principle i I guess I was just more skeptical about the chip telling us anything about the actual metaphysics the chip test I mean well but certainly if they were replaced part of my auditory cortex and I went around saying nothing seems different to me

1:32:45 that would be a very good reason to take take the precautionary principle seriously I think yeah but I don't think it'd be any reason at all the things that actually still have in conscious experience Wow yeah yeah yeah well I understand I mean the metaphysics it's very very intricate and difficult yeah I mean it depends on so which part exactly where the cutoff is but I mean like I said I have a pretty strong biological naturalism background I mean that's where I really I'm just an old-fashioned kind of identity theorist at heart you know I don't really think there's any good

1:33:18 reason to deny the identity theory I certainly haven't seen any so anyway so that's where my heart I could be convinced but I just don't know I respect that I mean I I understand completely you know it seems to me that to the extent that consciousness is physical it's a biological phenomena and I think we could in principle produce it in the lab through synthetic biology and maybe through artificial intelligence in a different substrate and the question

1:33:51 is could we get the dispositional properties instantiated like real worlds that would allow a conscious being to exist but like as an advocate of the way you see approach I'm taking a here-and-now perspective on it technological possibility is where it's at it's about what the AI companies are really going to produce yeah I guess I would say I agree with all of that I just one quick caveat is that I think that would be still the brain even if

1:34:23 this were a simulated environment or even if idealism was true I think that's still the the brain that in that simulated reality or in the idealistic reality which generates consciousness so really they are doing anything I think it's kind of ultimately compatible with those other metaphysical views ah what matters to me is that it's a brain that's doing it and then the rest is kind of you know we may have artificial brains right now I mean we may be in computer simulation we're sitting as if we're biological beings and exactly what exactly that's the kind of thought

1:34:57 behind this idea is that even if we were in a simulated environment it would still all the evidence points to it's the brain and if the brain is a simulated thing then well yet still the brain which is generating conscious experience in this simulation or at least that's the where my like I said I'm willing to all the robot overloads in the future I'm willing to be convinced and certainly I think that moral stuff is more important than the metaphysical stuff so I think that the precautionary principle and and getting that stuff erring on the side of caution is way more important than like the actual the truth of the what's really going on well you know we may not be

1:35:32 able to figure out the metaphysical stuff that's the problem that we've got be able to make ethical decisions exactly I love thinking about the metaphysics obviously right I mean it's you know but I mean it's hard because we don't really know what the fundamental physical laws are or capable of understanding them we don't know why we're conscious and even from a scientific standpoint we haven't figured out the neural basis of consciousness I mean maybe that's because consciousness isn't physical right I just I don't know

1:36:07 I mean so I I know you recently switched sides right you were a physicalist and now you're not so that's you're a little suspicious physicalism nicholas made me like when I was a PhD student and then I wrote a bunch of papers in the metaphysics of mind for the journals arguing against physicalism so but always I'm friendly to the idea that the brain is computational which is dude in that first book that sort of Jerry photo book right exactly that was a great book I like that book I sure enjoyed it I

1:36:40 didn't enjoy writing it God well someday we'll have to get back together and talk about physicalism and your argument against time and space time and whatever proto mentalism is which honestly I don't understand because if it's just like other some stuff which wouldn't put together there's consciousness that's just physically though but so that obviously we were going for a long time and I hear children wailing downstairs so I wonder if before we sign off if there's anything that hasn't come up which you would like to have come up before we go um I want to thank you my daughter your

1:37:17 show yeah no problem it's been a great pleasure talking with you I think your ideas and your perspective are just really needed in this debate so I I think it's a refreshing book I really do hope people read it I hope it gets a wide readership yeah exactly I wouldn't be surprised if it if it does actually why I go on television and talk about it so hoping some people read it like oh my gosh you've got to go on Fox I want people to read it Wow yeah we don't talk politics

1:37:54 Wow it's important I'm working with commerce now issue I meet with members of Congress in front I'm talking about the book over breakfast with Congress Wow so that's awesome I mean that's that's a that's really cool that you're doing it yeah that's awesome it's stressful yeah you're gonna go on the other sites you're gonna go on Bill Maher and stuff like that I don't know him okay yeah yes send me some suggestions I know because I only have

1:38:28 my little circle of people you know and yeah that'd be cool yeah yeah yeah come on disagreement and I love comedy if any of there's a comedy show that's my thing I look like I was like Neil deGrasse Tyson show with his he is a comedian Chuck nice we have a great time there laughing our heads I love that show that's just our talk radio show or is it show to you and graphic now I didn't know about the TV show okay very cool yeah then I go Wow hey like you said you want people to

1:39:10 read the book and these no matter what your views are this these are important things that think through and that's what I tell my students all the time and you know I do this in neuroscience and all the classes I teach these issues are less science fiction than we think at this point they're coming at us whether we like it or not if we don't think about them then they're just it's gonna happen to us instead of us doing it yeah that worries me cuz it's all about the money yeah exactly so yeah thanks Richard I really enjoy talking to you yeah I really enjoyed talking to you too Saul sign up I know just like I'll say by a fire button okay all right see you later all right