X-Message-Number: 15016 Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 21:34:18 -0700 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Consciousness and Context Robert Ettinger, in #15003, again raises the issue of "permissible and impermissible uploading scenarios" and thinks that some of us, myself included, "draw an arbitrary and ultimately indefensible line" between the two. I can't speak for the others (Lee Corbin is mentioned) but will address this issue from my own perspective. I think it is a worthwhile issue but that it has a fairly simple resolution that may have so far been overlooked, despite some effort on my part. The problem is illustrated by two scenarios. In one we have a robot of the future with a brain consisting of a programmable device. The brain is non-protoplasmic, but its software models a real human brain very carefully. So carefully we could imagine a real human brain (even if none meeting the exact requirements is presently extant in our universe) that functions isomorphically to the artificial one. Suppose the robot also looks human and acts human in all respects. So we uploaders say it's a human, only expressed in a different medium than the one we of today are familiar with, that is to say, biological tissue. This robot, we would say, has consciousness and feeling, just like a human, and we would base that conclusion on the implied isomorphism with a biological brain which, if it existed, we would also say is conscious and has feeling. The absence of biological tissue, we say, is no problem, so long as the isomorphism holds: it's the bits not the atoms that count. In the second scenario we are simply presented with a detailed record of the behavior of the above system, as a function of time, recording all the successive states or internal configruations of the artifical brain. This record, say, is stored in a big book (again, "Turing Tome" is a reasonably apt term) in which individual pages correspond to specific points in time or very short time intervals, so that the brain's recorded activity is completely represented. (We may assume our Tome pages altogether cover a sizable interval of time, say several decades.) Again we can establish an isomorphism with a living, protoplasmic brain, by mapping the pages to the condition of the (hypothetical) meat brain at the corresponding points in time. If "isomorphism is everything" as we uploaders seem forced to conclude, we must then regard this static record as conscious too--which most of us (myself for one) find untenable. So here's how I would resolve this problem. Consciousness, we might say, is a kind of mental motion. Just like its physical counterpart, it must be defined with respect to a frame of reference or context. It doesn't exist in total isolation. An isomorphism, on the other hand can involve a system that does exist in total isolation; for example, we could establish an isomorphism between an active system in the real world and a mathematical abstraction giving its description. (Note that this abstraction is not the same as a static record, which in turn is a physical entity, that is, a printed copy in some form. The abstraction itself, like the number 5 or the cosine function, is not a physical entity.) Here the non-physical entity (description) has no context or frame of reference. I would call it "not conscious" but in saying that I realize I have a specific context in mind (my own). So, relative to my world this abstraction is not conscious, and that seems a reasonable judgment, even if an isomorphism should exist with something that *is* conscious. In dealing with a static record we can apply the same standards. Here we do have a physical entity but it is still reasonable to deny that it is conscious or actively expresses consciousness. It's interesting that here, unlike the case of the abstraction, there is an implied context, the surrounding world, within which the record is "static": In effect the context becomes part of the definition of the record. In a similar way we can rule out other entities being conscious in the context of our world as we usually understand it, even when they are isomorphic to systems we would consider conscious. This, for example, might cover the case of many computers spaced light years apart, which thus are causally disconnected, that collectively produce the activity of a conscious being over a substantial time but individually only do rudimentary things such as flash a single image on a monitor screen. You couldn't talk to or otherwise interact with such a being, so it is not conscious in our frame of reference. On the other hand, a system might be so structured that it is reasonable to say that within it there are beings that are conscious relative to a context established by the system itself. It is easy to see how this could happen with a static record, if we assume it not only contains the brain states of some particular individual but a description of the surrounding environment, other beings, and so on. So, relative to the happenings depicted, these beings would experience consciousness, though not relative to us. So now we *seem* to have reached the point where consciousness itself must be considered a relative phenomenon entirely, something that will certainly seem counterintuitive if you think about it. ("I *know* I'm conscious, no matter what 'context' I may be in.") So we may ask, isn't there a more absolute notion of consciousness, that is not context-dependent? Here I must confess I don't have the full answer, but two thoughts stand out. One is that sometimes a context is implied, as in the static record we just considered, that rules out consciousness. The other is that, if one accepts the idea of the multiverse (as I do) very many scenarios must have a real existence somewhere. We can say (in very many cases at least) that when we have something that is isomorphic to a *possible* conscious system but one that doesn't actually exist in our universe, it does exist somewhere; thus it is "real" even if not in our world. So we might say that consciousness truly happens, independently of context, whenever it happens, in a relative sense, for *some* universe in the multiverse. But this does not force us to conclude that a static record (once again, by implication, present in and static from our frame of reference), or an abstraction (lacking any real context), is conscious. Ettinger in his posting says, "I still think that the isomorphism postulate leads to reductio ad absurdum, even if at first we tentatively allow it." The foregoing to me seems a good starting point for resolving the problem, though in some cases perhaps much more would need to be said. However, I would now like to (again) bring up a problem for the non-uploaders that to me seems to have no reasonable resolution from their point of view. We imagine that some property has been discovered for protoplasmic brains, maybe a standing wave pattern or something else, that always correlates with consciousness. As a last resort we could simply note that conscious, protoplasmic brains are always made of protoplasm, a property that will not be shared by non-protoplasmic entities whether conscious or not. In our robot above, then, some property of biological brains is lacking. So is the robot conscious or just imitating it? I see no good way out of this, from a non-uploader's point of view. To simply say, by fiat, that only protoplasmic brains can be conscious won't do--it smacks of solipsism. So how in principle would we determine if a system that looks and acts conscious is not just faithfully faking it and really not conscious at all? What empirical test would decide the question? None, as far as I can see. Best to all, Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15016