Organisms are naturally selected to respond to their environment. Selected responses are genetically transmitted and inherited. In mobile organisms, some such responses become conscious motivations. Thus, adaptations and mutations on the molecular level of combinations of genes generate consciousness on the macroscopic level of organisms with central nervous systems. Thus also, consciousness is an emergent property of some organisms, not an independent substance interacting with organisms. Materialist philosophy is subtle and not reductionist.
Pleasure and pain have survival value but require consciousness. Therefore, sufficiently complex and sensitive organisms tend to become conscious. They pass from lacking sustenance to feeling hungry or from being dangerously hot to feeling uncomfortably hot. Can a mechanism be sufficiently complex and sensitive to become conscious? A mechanism has a power source and replaceable parts on the macroscopic level but is not able to change itself or to transmit information on the molecular level. Therefore, it cannot generate an equivalent of genes. This has to be an obstacle to becoming conscious.
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I still don't believe in materialism. Despite the difficulties you've had with Mr. Wright, the detailed arguments he made in opposition to materialism strikes me as far more convincing.
Ad astra! Sean
If Wright argued against mechanistic reductionism, then I agree with him.
"but is not able to change itself or to transmit information on the molecular level. Therefore, it cannot generate an equivalent of genes"
Any self-reproducing mechanism would include the instructions for making every part of itself. That set of instructions would be the equivalent of genes. If the copy it makes has a set of instructions with a difference from the instructions in the original that is a 'genetic' mutation. I don't see that your objection is valid.
Jim,
Will an alteration within a mechanism be profound enough to generate consciousness?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I think Wright criticized all aspects of materialism, but I don't claim to understand everything he wrote in his massively detailed philosophic arguments. You two are the philosophers, not me!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I suspect that he did not allow for the "materialism" that says that there is one reality within which quantitative change become qualitative change. Thus, qualitatively new properties like consciousness emerge and are not reducible to the properties of lower stages of development like inanimate matter. That reductionism is what many people think that "materialism" is.
Paul.
Paul: "Will an alteration within a mechanism be profound enough to generate consciousness?"
Is an organism with a brain not a 'mechanism'?
Are the differences between the 'wetware' in our skulls, and the hardware in an electronic computer such as to make the latter *inherently* incapable of consciousness.
There is Penrose's suggestion that the action in a brain includes quantum phenomena that are required for consciousness. So maybe only quantum computers could develop consciousness.
Jim,
An organism is not a mechanism. Biology is complex chemistry, not just physics. A computer is inherently unconscious if all that it does is manipulate symbols according to programmed rules without any knowledge or understanding of the meanings of the symbols. All the knowledge and understanding are in the programmers and users of the computer, not in the computer itself. An artefact would be conscious if it duplicated the functions of a brain but a computer merely simulates those functions.
Quantum mechanics and consciousness have in common that they are mysterious and also that there is an observer effect in quantum mechanics.
Mobile organisms interacting with their environments become conscious of their environments. A computer processing inputted symbols is not interacting with an environment. It does not feel, hear, see etc. An artefact that did these things would be an artificial organism, not or not only a computer.
Paul.
See these musings from someone working in the field of AI
https://humphryscomputing.com/philosophy.html
Especially the bits about
AI should be evolutionarily-plausible
and then
AI is possible...but AI won't happen
Kaor, Paul!
I don't think it was the merely reductionist forms of materialism Wright criticized. But you would have to ask him about that, proposing your preferred version for his criticism.
I agree that both von Neumann machines and intelligent "species" arising from them are highly unlikely.
Ad astra! Sean
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