Two Works Explore the Mind and Consciousness
Hi, I’m Robert Fulton from Amarillo, Texas. Let me tell you about a pair of books I’ve been reading about the complex question of consciousness, John Searle’s “The Rediscovery of the Mind (from 1992) and Daniel Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained” (from 1991). For me, as a professor of Humanities, the question of consciousness is part and parcel to my work, but also my personal interests regarding the human mind. Although this reading suggestion is not geared specifically towards the questions of AI and consciousness, it is highly relevant for those engaged in that discussion. Demis Hassabis of Google Deepmind recently said that the defining difference between an agent AGI and humans is indeed consciousness. Oxford Mathematician Sir Roger Penrose also says that consciousness divides being clever (which AI can be) and being truly intelligent because consciousness includes understanding, which mere computation does not.
Searle and Dennett’s books are essential to the foundation of many of the modern conversations about the philosophy of mind and consciousness, and both are anticipating the dilemma we now face with the questions of a technological singularity and the possibility of whether an AI system or agent can in fact have consciousness.
Although Dennett and Searle are not the only voices in this conversation from the early 90s, they were certainly two of the most vocal and confident, and often most arrogant. Searle was most famous for his work on Intentionality and Speech acts from the 80’s, and more infamous of late for losing his Professor Emeritus status for sexual misconduct. Dennett paired with Gödel, Escher, and Bach’s wunderkind Douglass Hofstadter in a book called, “The Mind’s I” that also probed questions of consciousness.
In “Consciousness Explained” Dennett seems to have mistaken Nietzsche’s concept of philosophizing with a hammer to mean making a single point and pounding it to death with that hammer. For Dennett, he clearly thinks that consciousness does NOT exist on any special level and is purely a materialistic phenomenon within the brain and nervous system. Input in, behavior out, and there is no grey matter involved with the complexity of what some might call the Soul. Far from it, Dennett wants to purge the very idea of a non-physical Soul and consciousness from humanity once and for all. We are merely computational beings.
Searle takes great issue with pure materialists like Dennett but does not go for the non-materialist view that one might expect. Instead, Searle says that our consciousness is an EMERGENT aspect of the brain, but is not merely computational, but also by no means is consciousness something immaterial.
In other words, where we might expect to see a classic Plato-Aristotle split between the nature of the Soul and Consciousness as one being immaterial and immortal and the other being material and mortal, Searle wants to get away from the Cartesian DUALITY that he sees has plagued the philosophy of Mind and Consciousness for over 3 centuries.
By emergent, Searle is along the lines of Michael Polyani in that he sees consciousness as a higher-order function of the brain than mere computation, but still a function of the brain nonetheless. Like drawing a six-square cross on a piece of paper to represent a 2-D shape, the paper could then be folded into a cube to go to 3 dimensions. This would be an emergent aspect of the paper to go up a dimension, while still retaining the lower dimension. So, the brain can be on a computational level with neurons and molecular interactions, but then also go up a notch to become conscious, though retaining the lower functions.
To bring it home, and perhaps the most compelling aspect of this debate is that while Dennett keeps on hammering his point into the ground, again and again that Consciousness is only PHYSICAL, Searle finds the aporia of his own argument in the fact that consciousness is SUBJECTIVE, which means, even if there is something as Consciousness (Dennett shudders), it cannot be shared, which means, we cannot properly isolate it.
Shannon Vallor’s book, “The AI Mirror” says that AI can only mirror what humans have done and created. If this is indeed true, then the battle over “what is consciousness?” leaves us at an impasse then with both Dennett and Searle, and pretty much all others who attempt to define this concept. As such, these books are good fuel for thought and provide a foundation for the conversation at hand, but ultimately the jury is still out on the fate of Consciousness.
I’m Robert Fulton from Amarillo, Texas.
Dr. Robert Fulton was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but in the meantime has lived in various places in the US, Belgium, Italy, and India. He earned his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in Comparative Literature with language studies in Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, and German and a thesis and later monograph on the concepts of Death and Memory in the works of James Joyce. He taught courses in the Liberal Arts Honors program at UT before heading to Europe, where he lived for nearly 15 years. Robert has studied multiple languages as a professional translator including Dutch, Italian, and French. He was a visiting professor of English literature at the University of Bologna in Italy and Antwerp in Belgium, where the latter he was a Fulbright visiting professor of British and American literature. Outside of the academy for many years, he worked as a professional translator in the Humanities as well as being Curator of Academic Affairs at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin. He is a certified advanced Yoga Teacher Training instructor, specifically in Sanskrit and Indian Philosophy, and now teaches as an Associate Professor of Humanities and English at Amarillo College.
A professional translator and certified Yoga instructor as well as swim coach have been part of the various ways of his teaching. Passions developed along the way include: swimming, photography, travel, cooking, yoga, and a deep love for languages, both ancient and modern.
