The Farnsworth Refutation: Dennett, Consciousness, and a Robot
In Futurama, Professor Farnsworth encounters a Robot:
Robot: Mumbo, perhaps. Jumbo, perhaps not! With all your modern science are you any closer to understanding the mystery of how a robot walks or talks?
Farnsworth: Yes, you idiot. The circuit diagram is right here on the inside of your case.
I have been watching a great lecture series by Dan Dennett, on “Brains, Computers and Minds”:
http://mbb.harvard.edu/resources/dennett09.php
Links to videos:
http://mbb.harvard.edu/resources/pastnews.php
Along with the lectures were great post-talk commentaries, including an excellent criticism of Dennett's use of “memes” by Stephen Pinker (which Dennett then had a good go at refuting).
One interesting thought, expressed in the second commentary, about Dennett's dealings with consciousness was that Dennett never seems to quite deal fully with consciousness itself. He says how it must be built up from unconscious processes otherwise there is no explanation. Dennett also shows a great cartoon of “stream of consciousness” which he says must also, by definition, be the stream of consciousness of entities which are “philosophical zombies” - hypothetical entities which appear in every way to be identical to us, but supposedly have no subjective experiences. But still, Dennett doesn't quite close the loop, doesn't deliver the punchline. So I will.
The devastating blow for the idea of consciousness (not in the meaning of being awake, but having supposedly mysterious subjective experience) is not just that other people could be zombies and yet act in every way like we would assume that they would if they were not, and so, according to Dennett, the idea of consciousness in the sense I use above has no use. The real blow will come when there is sufficient understanding of neurology so that we can explain why a brain will come to have the feeling that it is conscious, and the feeling that this conscious state is something that needs explaining. What is more, it is the nature of the philosophical zombie that the explanation for why someone ends up saying “I am conscious” has to be purely neural.
Like when Farnsworth refutes the robot in Futurama; when someone says “qualia can't be explained”, we will be able to say “yes, they can: the diagrams are here in your brain”. Ok, so not quite, but we will be able to say something perhaps more meaningful: “These diagrams of your brain show why you have the feeling that qualia can't be explained.” Quite how those who wish to insist that qualia have some separate reality proceed after that is going to be interesting to see.
Robot: Mumbo, perhaps. Jumbo, perhaps not! With all your modern science are you any closer to understanding the mystery of how a robot walks or talks?
Farnsworth: Yes, you idiot. The circuit diagram is right here on the inside of your case.
I have been watching a great lecture series by Dan Dennett, on “Brains, Computers and Minds”:
http://mbb.harvard.edu/resources/dennett09.php
Links to videos:
http://mbb.harvard.edu/resources/pastnews.php
Along with the lectures were great post-talk commentaries, including an excellent criticism of Dennett's use of “memes” by Stephen Pinker (which Dennett then had a good go at refuting).
One interesting thought, expressed in the second commentary, about Dennett's dealings with consciousness was that Dennett never seems to quite deal fully with consciousness itself. He says how it must be built up from unconscious processes otherwise there is no explanation. Dennett also shows a great cartoon of “stream of consciousness” which he says must also, by definition, be the stream of consciousness of entities which are “philosophical zombies” - hypothetical entities which appear in every way to be identical to us, but supposedly have no subjective experiences. But still, Dennett doesn't quite close the loop, doesn't deliver the punchline. So I will.
The devastating blow for the idea of consciousness (not in the meaning of being awake, but having supposedly mysterious subjective experience) is not just that other people could be zombies and yet act in every way like we would assume that they would if they were not, and so, according to Dennett, the idea of consciousness in the sense I use above has no use. The real blow will come when there is sufficient understanding of neurology so that we can explain why a brain will come to have the feeling that it is conscious, and the feeling that this conscious state is something that needs explaining. What is more, it is the nature of the philosophical zombie that the explanation for why someone ends up saying “I am conscious” has to be purely neural.
Like when Farnsworth refutes the robot in Futurama; when someone says “qualia can't be explained”, we will be able to say “yes, they can: the diagrams are here in your brain”. Ok, so not quite, but we will be able to say something perhaps more meaningful: “These diagrams of your brain show why you have the feeling that qualia can't be explained.” Quite how those who wish to insist that qualia have some separate reality proceed after that is going to be interesting to see.