y most accounts, Susan Schneider lives a pretty normal life. BAn assistant professor of Living in philosophy, she teaches classes, writes academic papers and a Matrix travels occasionally to speak at a philosophy or science lecture. At home, she shuttles her daughter to play dates, cooks dinner A Philosophy and goes mountain biking. Professor’s Life in Then suddenly, right in the middle of this ordinary American a Web of Questions existence, it happens. Maybe we’re all living in a Matrix, she thinks to herself. It’s like in the by Peter Nichols movie when the question, What is the Matrix? keeps popping up on Neo’s computer screen and sets him to wondering. Schneider starts considering all the what-ifs and the maybes that now pop up all around her. Maybe the warm sun on my face, the trees swishing by and the car I’m driving down the road are actually code streaming through the circuits of a great computer. What if this world, which feels so compellingly real, is only a simulation thrown up by a complex and clever computer game? If I’m in it, how could I even know? What if my real- seeming self is nothing more than an algorithm on a computational network? What if everything is a computer-generated dream world – a momentary assemblage of information clicking and switching and running away on a grid laid down by some advanced but unknown intelligence? It’s like that time, after earning an economics degree as an undergrad at Berkeley, she suddenly switched to philosophy. “I don’t think my parents really knew what to do with me,” Schneider recalls. Friends and acquaintances are sometimes amused by the tangled-up matrix of questions and answers that Schneider ceaselessly tries to unravel – all that wondering about free will and fundamental building blocks of reality and the Matrix thing. “It makes you a little weird,” she admits, Penn Arts & Sciences 19 Lisa Godfrey “I believe there are objective answers to the questions, but I’m a bit skeptical when it comes to our capacity to find them.”
“but this constant reflection on of philosophical reflection in the storm of signals flashing across things gives you an enhanced West. What ultimately is real? a network of neurons? That’s appreciation of ordinary life.” What is the nature of mind? how face-recognition programs Aristotle taught that What does it mean to be a self? that scan passengers in airports philosophy begins in wonder. What can we know? “These work. Are we biological versions For Schneider, wonder seems questions don’t have obvious of that with a carbon-, rather to have been a good start to a or uncontroversial answers,” than silicon-based, computational career as a philosophy professor Schneider observes. “I try to architecture? Or is there some as well. Last fall she taught take the philosophical program kind of immaterial “soul” at the a course on Philosophy and as teaching students how to center of our self? “If we get Science Fiction. “Science fiction ask the right questions and a complete explanation of the stories fire the philosophical conceive of what the possible causal origins of behavior in imagination,” she says. “You can answer space would be like.” neuroscience, then maybe we use them to teach what I think The answer space Schneider don’t need to posit anything are really deep philosophical moves around in these days has like a soul or a god,” Schneider concepts in a way that’s very been opened up by recent and speculates. “Can these compelling for students.” fast-moving discoveries in the computational approaches ever The course uses thought brain sciences. Besides being explain what’s distinctive about experiments to think through a member of the philosophy human thought? Generally, implications of sci-fi ideas and department, she is a faculty I’m interested in scientific puzzles depicted in various films affiliate with Penn’s Center descriptions of the mind and and literary works. “Students are for Cognitive Neuroscience whether this stuff really answers all familiar with The Matrix,” she and the Institute for Research age-old questions about the explains as an example. “They in Cognitive Science. Before nature of mind and body.” immediately get the idea of how entering grad school in Much of what Schneider everything that seems real could philosophy, she spent a year does in her reflections is be an illusion. It’s a quick way as a fellow with the National articulate the scope and limits of making a really important Institutes of Health being of the computational approach philosophical point, and it brought up to speed in cognitive to mind, running arguments opens the door to reflections neuroscience at the University to their conclusions, which tell about the limits of what we can of Rochester. Not long ago, she you, given a particular set of and cannot know.” Schneider and Max Velmans, a psychology assumptions, what scientific and recently finished a book on these professor at the University of philosophical positions you are ideas titled Science Fiction and London, completed the first-ever committed to and whether they Philosophy. Currently in press interdisciplinary reference book are coherent. She is putting with Wiley-Blackwell, the book in the new field of consciousness the finishing touches on a book highlights and explores classic studies. The Blackwell Companion that investigates how and if it philosophical problems – the to Consciousness is a fat volume is possible for our hopes and nature of mind and how we of philosophical reflections beliefs, ideas and inmost secrets know the external world exists, that distill current thinking to be grounded in the algorithms for instance – embedded in on the fact and the riddle and connections and activation sci-fi themes like artificial of human awareness. patterns of the computational intelligence, time travel, robot “I’m looking at the nature brain. In “The Language of rights, teleportation, cyborgs, of mind from the vantage Thought: New Directions” and a genetic modification and more. point of cognitive science,” series of related journal articles, “Philosophy is the enterprise she says. “There are putative she considers whether the of critically reflecting on explanations for the phenomenon panoply of human thought can life’s fundamental questions,” of consciousness within be explained by current theories Schneider ventures. “The really cognitive science that suggest of brain science. “Grasping the good questions are ones that we it’s just a matter of computation limits of what cognitive science haven’t been able to answer.” in the brain. So I guess the can explain” she notes, “is, Indeed, many of them were philosophical question is, Is that without doubt, one of the most posed by the ancient Greeks all there is?” What if thinking important tasks of contemporary who gave birth to the tradition is information processing – a philosophy of mind.” At the very
20 Spring/Summer 2008 least, she hopes her reflections Human Consciousness will help clarify and inspire renewed appreciation for the – in 60 Seconds answer space surrounding the ideas being put forth by Suppose that you are sitting in a cafe discoveries in cognitive science. studying before an exam. All in one moment, In everyday life, Schneider you taste the espresso you sip, consider an idea inhabits an “answer space” and hear the scream of the espresso machine. hollowed out amid a torrent of This is your current stream of consciousness. questions many of us don’t see. Conscious streams seem to be very much bound Maybe we do live in a computer up with who you are. It is not that this particular program. Maybe reality is moment is essential – although you may feel informational. In The Matrix, that certain ones are important. It is rather that the character Morpheus holds throughout your waking life, you seem to be the forth on a longstanding and subject of a unified stream of experience that presents you as the subject viewing the show. archetypal philosophy question. Let us focus on three features of the stream. “What is real? How do you First, it may seem to you, put metaphorically, define ‘real’? If you’re talking that there is a sort of screen or stage on which about what you can feel, what experiences present themselves to your mind’s you can smell, what you can eye. That is, there appears to be a central place taste and see, then real is simply where experiences are “screened” before you. electrical signals interpreted by Daniel Dennett calls this place the “Cartesian your brain.” What if? All the Theater.” Second, in this central place there questions about mind and reality seems to be a singular point in time when, and the limits of knowledge given a particular sensory input, consciousness come pouring down once more, happens. For instance, there seems to be one moment in which the scream of the espresso streaming through the assistant machine begins, pulling you out of your philosophy professor’s mind. concentration. Finally, there appears to be “I believe there are objective a self – a someone who is inside the theater, answers to the questions watching the show. philosophers ask, but I’m a I challenge you to think about each of bit skeptical when it comes to these features in more detail. Each is highly our capacity to find them,” she problematic. For instance, an explanation of comments. “I mean, why should consciousness cannot literally be that there is we be confident that we’re a mind’s eye in the brain watching a show. And good philosophers? Maybe we there is no evidence that there is a singular can’t get at the answers due to place or time in the brain where consciousness congeals. Thought seems highly distributed our physical makeup. Maybe a throughout the cortex. So what and when and supercomputer that we’ll create where is consciousness? one day will be better at doing And, for that matter, why are we conscious philosophy than we are.” Or at all? Suppose that cognitive science is correct maybe Morpheus is right and that that the mind is computational. Why does all computer has already been built, this information processing in the brain, under and we’re living in it. What if certain conditions, have a felt quality? Couldn’t reality is a virtual one – shadowy it simply go on “in the dark?” experiences cast by lightning So upon reflection, consciousness is both leaps across a computer grid? the most immediate aspect of our lives and one What if Plato is right about our of the most mysterious. mistaken assumption that the Adapted from Susan Schneider’s 60 Second parade of flickering shadows on Lecture. Watch a video at http://www.sas. the wall of a cave is reality? upenn.edu/60secondlecture. “Everything is pretty bizarre when you think about it,” Schneider remarks. “It’s a neat thing to be just bewildered. It’s the human condition.”
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