Human and Machine Consciousness DAVID GAMEZ To access digital resources including: blog posts videos online appendices and to purchase copies of this book in: hardback paperback ebook editions Go to: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/545 Open Book Publishers is a non-profit independent initiative. We rely on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality academic works. Human and Machine Consciousness David Gamez https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2018 David Gamez This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: David Gamez. Human and Machine Consciousness. 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ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-298-1 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-299-8 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-300-1 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-301-8 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-302-5 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0107 Cover image: Stereogram created by David Gamez with data from Anderson Winkler (https://brainder.org/research/brain-for-blender/) licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. All paper used by Open Book Publishers is SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) and Forest Stewardship Council(r)(FSC(r) certified. Printed in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia by Lightning Source for Open Book Publishers (Cambridge, UK) This book is dedicated to the first artificial system that understands it. A flash, a mantling, and the ferment rises, Thus, in this moment, hope materializes, A mighty project may at first seem mad, But now we laugh, the ways of chance forseeing: A thinker then, in mind’s deep wonder clad, May give at last a thinking brain its being. […] Now chimes the glass, a note of sweetest strength, It clouds, it clears, my utmost hope it proves, For there my longing eyes behold at length A dapper form, that lives and breathes and moves. My mannikin! What can the world ask more? The mystery is brought to light of day. Now comes the whisper we are waiting for: He forms his speech, has clear-cut words to say. Goethe, Faust Acknowledgements I am extremely grateful to Barry Cooper and the John Templeton Foundation for supporting this work (Project ID 15619: ‘Mind, Mechanism and Mathematics: Turing Centenary Research Project’). This grant gave me the time that I needed to sit down and write this book. I have really appreciated the help of Anil Seth, who supported my application for a Turing Fellowship and was very welcoming during my time at the University of Sussex. I am also grateful to the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science and the Department of Informatics at the University of Sussex for giving me a place to work. I greatly enjoyed conversations about consciousness with my colleagues at Sussex. I would also like to thank Owen Holland, whose CRONOS project started my work on human and machine consciousness, and the reviewers of this book, who had many helpful suggestions. I owe a warm debt of gratitude to my parents, Alejandro and Penny Gamez, who have always given me a great deal of support and encouragement. Contents List of Illustrations 1 1. Introduction 3 2. The Emergence of the Concept of Consciousness 9 3. The Philosophy and Science of Consciousness 33 4. The Measurement of Consciousness 43 5. From Correlates to Theories of Consciousness 69 6. Physical Theories of Consciousness 85 7. Information Theories of Consciousness 93 8. Computation Theories of Consciousness 103 9. Predictions and Deductions about Consciousness 113 10. Modification and Enhancement of Consciousness 125 11. Machine Consciousness 135 12. Conclusion 149 Appendix: Definitions, Assumptions, Lemmas and Constraints 159 Endnotes 165 Bibliography 201 Index 219 List of Illustrations All images are © David Gamez, CC BY 4.0. 2.1. Visual representation of a bubble of perception. 12 2.2. The presence of an invisible god explains regularities 14 in the visible world. 2.3. Colour illusion. 17 2.4. Primary and secondary qualities. 19 2.5. The relationship between a bubble of experience and a 21 brain. 2.6. Interpretation of physical objects as black boxes. 23 2.7. The relationship between a bubble of experience and 25 an invisible physical brain. 2.8. The emergence of the concept of consciousness. 28 3.1. The use of imagination to solve a scientific problem. 35 3.2. Imagination cannot be used to understand the 38 relationship between consciousness and the invisible physical world. 3.3. Learnt association between consciously experienced 39 brain activity and the sensation of an ice cube. 4.1. Problem of colour inversion. 51 4.2. Some of the definitions and assumptions that are 53 required for scientific experiments on consciousness. 4.3. The relationship between macro- and micro-scale 58 e-causal events. 4.4. Assumptions about the relationship between CC sets, 60 consciousness and first-person reports. 5.1. The measurement of an elephant’s height in a 70 scientist’s bubble of experience. 5.2. Theory of consciousness (c-theory). 79 2 Human and Machine Consciousness 7.1. Information c-theory. 97 8.1. Soap bubble computer. 104 9.1. Testing a c-theory’s prediction about a conscious state. 114 9.2. Testing a c-theory’s prediction about a physical state. 115 9.3. Deduction of the conscious state of a bat. 119 10.1. Modifications of a bubble of experience. 128 10.2. A reliable c-theory is used to realize a desired state of 129 consciousness. 11.1. A reliable c-theory is used to build a MC4 machine. 138 11.2. A reliable c-theory is used to deduce the consciousness 139 of an artificial system. 1. Introduction Consciousness is extremely important to us. Without consciousness, there is just nothingness, death, night. It is a crime to kill a person who is potentially conscious. Permanently unconscious people are left to die. Religious people face death with hope because they believe that their conscious souls will break free from their physical bodies. We know next to nothing about consciousness and its relationship to the physical world. The science of consciousness is mired in philosophical problems. We can only guess about the consciousness of coma patients, infants and animals. We have no idea about the consciousness of artificial systems. This book neutralizes the philosophical problems with consciousness and clears the way for scientific research. It explains how we can develop mathematical theories that can make believable predictions about consciousness. The first obstacles that need to be overcome are the metaphysical theories of consciousness. Some people claim that consciousness is a separate substance; other people believe that it is identical to the physical world. These theories generate endless debates and it is very difficult to prove or refute them. This book eliminates some of these theories and suspends judgement about the rest. The next obstacle is the hard problem of consciousness. This typically appears when people try and fail to imagine how colourful conscious sensations are related to the colourless world of modern physics. This book breaks the hard problem of consciousness down into a pseudo problem, a difficult problem and a set of brute regularities. Some problems with consciousness cannot be solved. For example, we cannot prove that a person is conscious. These problems affect our ability to measure consciousness through first-person reports. This book © David Gamez, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0107.01 4 Human and Machine Consciousness neutralizes these problems by making assumptions. The results from the science of consciousness can then be considered to be true given these assumptions. When these obstacles have been overcome the scientific study of consciousness becomes straightforward. We can measure consciousness, measure the physical world and look for mathematical relationships between these measurements. We can use artificial intelligence to discover mathematical theories of consciousness. Eventually we will discover mathematical theories that map between states of consciousness and states of the physical world. We will use these theories to make believable predictions about the consciousness of infants, animals and robots. We will measure the consciousness of brain- damaged patients. We will build conscious machines, repair damaged consciousnesses and create designer states of consciousness. The scientific study of consciousness is clarified by this book. As you read it the philosophical problems will dissolve and you will gain a clear vision of consciousness research. You will no longer worry about whether consciousness is a separate substance. You will not be troubled by a desire to reduce consciousness to particles or forces. You will understand that a scientific theory of consciousness is a mathematical relationship between a formal description of consciousness and a formal description of the physical world.