The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil
Authors: Ray Kurzweil
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unconscious?
I could go on for a long time with such conundrums. And indeed, people have been thinking about these quandaries for a long time. Plato, for one, was preoccupied with these issues. In the Phaedo, The Republic, and Theaetetus, Plato expresses the profound paradox inherent in the concept of consciousness and a human’s apparent ability to freely choose. On the one hand, human beings partake of the natural world and are subject to its laws. Our brains are natural phenomena and thus must follow the cause-and-effect laws manifest in machines and other lifeless creations of our species. Plato was familiar with the potential complexity of machines and their ability to emulate elaborate logical processes. On the other hand, cause-and-effect mechanics, no matter how complex, should not, according to Plato, give rise to self-awareness or consciousness. Plato first attempts to resolve this conflict in his theory of the Forms: Consciousness is not an attribute of the mechanics of thinking, but rather the ultimate reality of human existence. Our consciousness, or “soul,” is immutable and unchangeable. Thus, our mental interaction with the physical world is on the level of the “mechanics” of our complicated thinking process. The soul stands aloof.
But no, this doesn’t really work, Plato realizes. If the soul is unchanging, then it cannot learn or partake in reason, because it would need to change to absorb and respond to experience. Plato ends up dissatisfied with positing consciousness in either place: the rational processes of the natural world or the mystical level of the ideal Form of the self or soul. 4
The concept of free will reflects an even deeper paradox. Free will is purposeful behavior and decision making. Plato believed in a “corpuscular physics” based on fixed and determined rules of cause and effect. But if human decision making is based on such predictable interactions of basic particles, our decisions must also be predetermined. That would contradict human freedom to choose. The addition of randomness into the natural laws is a possibility, but it does not solve the problem. Randomness would eliminate the predetermination of decisions and actions, but it contradicts the purposefulness of free will, as there is nothing purposeful in randomness.
Okay, let’s put free will in the soul. No, that doesn’t work either. Separating free will from the rational cause-and-effect mechanics of the natural world would require putting reason and learning into the soul as well, for otherwise the soul would not have the means to make meaningful decisions. Now the soul is itself becoming a complex machine, which contradicts its mystical simplicity.
Perhaps this is why Plato wrote dialogues. That way he could passionately express both sides of these contradictory positions. I am sympathetic to Plato’s dilemma: None of the obvious positions is really sufficient. A deeper truth can be perceived only by illuminating the opposing sides of a paradox.
Plato was certainly not the last thinker to ponder these questions. We can identify several schools of thought on these subjects, none of them very satisfactory.
The “Consciousness Is Just a Machine Reflecting on Itself” School
A common approach is to deny the issue exists: Consciousness and free will are just illusions induced by the ambiguities of language. A slight variation is that consciousness is not exactly an illusion, but just another logical process. It is a process responding and reacting to itself. We can build that in a machine: just build a procedure that has a model of itself, and that examines and responds to its own methods. Allow the process to reflect on itself. There, now you have consciousness. It is a set of abilities that evolved because self-reflective ways of thinking are inherently more powerful.
The difficulty with arguing against the “consciousness is just a machine reflecting on itself” school is that this perspective is
I could go on for a long time with such conundrums. And indeed, people have been thinking about these quandaries for a long time. Plato, for one, was preoccupied with these issues. In the Phaedo, The Republic, and Theaetetus, Plato expresses the profound paradox inherent in the concept of consciousness and a human’s apparent ability to freely choose. On the one hand, human beings partake of the natural world and are subject to its laws. Our brains are natural phenomena and thus must follow the cause-and-effect laws manifest in machines and other lifeless creations of our species. Plato was familiar with the potential complexity of machines and their ability to emulate elaborate logical processes. On the other hand, cause-and-effect mechanics, no matter how complex, should not, according to Plato, give rise to self-awareness or consciousness. Plato first attempts to resolve this conflict in his theory of the Forms: Consciousness is not an attribute of the mechanics of thinking, but rather the ultimate reality of human existence. Our consciousness, or “soul,” is immutable and unchangeable. Thus, our mental interaction with the physical world is on the level of the “mechanics” of our complicated thinking process. The soul stands aloof.
But no, this doesn’t really work, Plato realizes. If the soul is unchanging, then it cannot learn or partake in reason, because it would need to change to absorb and respond to experience. Plato ends up dissatisfied with positing consciousness in either place: the rational processes of the natural world or the mystical level of the ideal Form of the self or soul. 4
The concept of free will reflects an even deeper paradox. Free will is purposeful behavior and decision making. Plato believed in a “corpuscular physics” based on fixed and determined rules of cause and effect. But if human decision making is based on such predictable interactions of basic particles, our decisions must also be predetermined. That would contradict human freedom to choose. The addition of randomness into the natural laws is a possibility, but it does not solve the problem. Randomness would eliminate the predetermination of decisions and actions, but it contradicts the purposefulness of free will, as there is nothing purposeful in randomness.
Okay, let’s put free will in the soul. No, that doesn’t work either. Separating free will from the rational cause-and-effect mechanics of the natural world would require putting reason and learning into the soul as well, for otherwise the soul would not have the means to make meaningful decisions. Now the soul is itself becoming a complex machine, which contradicts its mystical simplicity.
Perhaps this is why Plato wrote dialogues. That way he could passionately express both sides of these contradictory positions. I am sympathetic to Plato’s dilemma: None of the obvious positions is really sufficient. A deeper truth can be perceived only by illuminating the opposing sides of a paradox.
Plato was certainly not the last thinker to ponder these questions. We can identify several schools of thought on these subjects, none of them very satisfactory.
The “Consciousness Is Just a Machine Reflecting on Itself” School
A common approach is to deny the issue exists: Consciousness and free will are just illusions induced by the ambiguities of language. A slight variation is that consciousness is not exactly an illusion, but just another logical process. It is a process responding and reacting to itself. We can build that in a machine: just build a procedure that has a model of itself, and that examines and responds to its own methods. Allow the process to reflect on itself. There, now you have consciousness. It is a set of abilities that evolved because self-reflective ways of thinking are inherently more powerful.
The difficulty with arguing against the “consciousness is just a machine reflecting on itself” school is that this perspective is
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