It seems that the goal of artificial intelligence (AI) is to create a computer/software combination that has self-awareness. In other words, a machine that can pass the Touring Test or inhabit the Chinese Room. A machine that not only simulates intelligence but that is truly conscious. When that state has been reached, I bet, we unique humans that we are, will still consider that machine to be exhibiting artificial intelligence; a state somehow different from the organic intelligence, perhaps divinely created intelligence, that humans display.
A recent article by Alan McComas, published in the current issue of American Scientist, suggests that consciousness is an evolutionary product of simply larger and larger storage and connections in the brains of organic living things. He rejects the assumption that consciousness is somehow greater than the sum of the parts.
McComas said, “We each possess a consciousness that seemly enables us to feel and think, to act, to remember, and to envision the future. Although consciousness is inextricably linked to our identity, it can oddly feel like a separate but connected being inside of us – an observer that is not only aware of us and our surroundings, but that also provides verbal commentary throughout our waking hours.
“It’s no wonder, then, that many ancient priests and philosophers took the mystical view that consciousness is conferred upon us or somehow arises from outside the body. What is more surprising is that such views continue despite enormous advances in neuroscience. Their persistence deepens the need for a clear exposition of a reductionist approach, which views consciousness as a function of the brain – a biological machine whose workings can be understood by an examination of its parts.”
So, are we machine or something grander? Science progresses by studying phenomena one-by-one. That is a reductionist method. We find all the pieces, figure out what they do, and put them together to understand the whole. Does it really work that way?
Then, finally is this question: Is intelligence just data? Could the information in my brain be digitized and dropped into some AI machine and, Voilà – “I’m back!” Upload, the fictional TV series, proposed just that scenario; consciousness can be uploaded into digital storage and a person’s full personality re-created as an avatar inside a virtual world. An interesting prospect.
As I enter into my 80th year, my concerns are less about how consciousness arises but where does consciousness go when my body dies. Do I just cease to exist? That is almost an unimaginable state. Maybe there is a heaven.
Resources
- Touring Test, Wikipedia.
- Chinese Room, Wikipedia.
- Consciousness: The Road to Reductionism, Alan J. McComas, American Scientist, March-April 2025.
- Reductionism, Wikipedia.
- Drawing of an automatic duck, Wikipedia. “René Descartes, in De homine (1662), claimed that non-human animals could be explained reductively as automata; meaning essentially as more mechanically complex versions of this Digesting Duck.”
- Upload (TV series), Wikipedia.
- Objects of consciousness, Donald D. Hoffman & Chetan Prakash, Frontiers in Psychology, June 2014. (Not directly related to our topic but quite interesting. They examine the notion that until we perceive an object it only exists as a probability.)
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