Human consciousness as a tractable scientific problem

lukeprog

I encounter many intelligent people (not usually LWers, though) who say that despite our recent scientific advances, human consciousness remains a mystery and currently intractable to science. This is wrong. Empirically distinguishable theories of consciousness have been around for at least 15 years, and the data are beginning to favor some theories over others. For a recent example, see this August 2011 article from Lau & Rosenthal in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, one of my favorite journals. (Review articles, yay!)

Abstract:

Higher-order theories of consciousness argue that conscious awareness crucially depends on higher-order mental representations that represent oneself as being in particular mental states. These theories have featured prominently in recent debates on conscious awareness. We provide new leverage on these debates by reviewing the empirical evidence in support of the higher-order view. We focus on evidence that distinguishes the higher-order view from its alternatives, such as the first-order, global workspace and recurrent visual processing theories. We defend the higher-order view against several major criticisms, such as prefrontal activity reflects attention but not awareness, and prefrontal lesion does not abolish awareness. Although the higher-order approach originated in philosophical discussions, we show that it is testable and has received substantial empirical support.

Abstract:

Higher-order theories of consciousness argue that conscious awareness crucially depends on higher-order mental representations that represent oneself as being in particular mental states. These theories have featured prominently in recent debates on conscious awareness. We provide new leverage on these debates by reviewing the empirical evidence in support of the higher-order view. We focus on evidence that distinguishes the higher-order view from its alternatives, such as the first-order, global workspace and recurrent visual processing theories. We defend the higher-order view against several major criticisms, such as prefrontal activity reflects attention but not awareness, and prefrontal lesion does not abolish awareness. Although the higher-order approach originated in philosophical discussions, we show that it is testable and has received substantial empirical support.

Chimera writes: I'm a bit worried about people getting angry at me for not "getting it"

You are what? Worried? Worried is a conscious experience. A movie of you being worried does not show someone else being worried, it shows an unconscious image that looks like you being worried. An automaton built to duplicate your behavior when you are worried feels nothing, there is nothing (no consciousness) there to feel anything, but when you are doing that stuff people know and more importantly, you know how you feel and what it means to feel worried.

Imagine a world filled with disney animatronic robots all programmed to behave like real world people in our world behaved. Unless you think all those singing ghosts in the Haunted Mansion at disneyland are feeling happy and scared, then you can know what is being discussed here by imagining the difference between what images of people feel (nothing) and what actual people feel.

Good luck with this.

I would argue that if someone constructed an automaton that behaved exactly like I would in any given real-world situation -- including novel situations, which Disney automatons can't handle -- then that automaton would, for all intents and purposes, be as conscious as I am. In fact, this automaton would, in fact, be a copy of me.

Let's imagine that tonight, while you sleep, evil aliens replace everyone else in your home town (except for yourself, that is) with one of those perfect automatons. Would you be able to tell that this had occurred ? If so, how would you determine this ?

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