Kind: captions
Language: en
The following is a conversation with
David Chalmer's. He's a philosopher and
cognitive scientist specializing in the
areas of philosophy of mind, philosophy
of language, and consciousness. He's
perhaps best known for formulating the
hard problem of consciousness, which
could be stated as why does the feeling
which accompanies awareness of sensory
information exist at all? Consciousness
is almost entirely a mystery. Many
people who worry about AI safety and
ethics believe that in some form
consciousness can and should be
engineered into AI systems of the
future. So while there's much mystery,
disagreement, and discoveries yet to be
made about consciousness, these
conversations, while fundamentally
philosophical in nature, may
nevertheless be very important for
engineers of modern AI systems to engage
in. This is the artificial intelligence
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education for young people around the
world. And now here's my conversation
with David Chamers.
Do you think we're living in a
simulation? I don't rule it out. There's
probably going to be a lot of
simulations in the history of the
cosmos.
If the simulation is designed well
enough, it'll be indistinguishable from
a non simulated reality.
And although we could keep searching for
evidence that were not in a simulation,
any of that evidence in principle could
be simulated. So, uh, I think it's a
possibility.
But do you think the thought experiment
is interesting or useful to calibrate
how we think about the nature of
reality?
Yeah, I definitely think it's
interesting and useful. In fact, I'm
actually writing a book about this right
now all about the simulation idea using
it to shed light on a whole bunch of
philosophical questions. So, uh you
know, the big one is how do we know
anything about the external world? Uh
Decart said, you know, maybe you're
being fooled by an evil demon who's
stimulating your brain into thinking
all this stuff is real when in fact it's
all made up. Well, the modern the modern
version of that is how do you know
you're not in a simulation? Then the
thought is if you're in a simulation,
none of this is real. So that's teaching
you something about about knowledge. How
do you know about the external world? I
think there's also really interesting
questions about the nature of reality
right here. I mean, if we are in a
simulation, is all this real? Is there
really a table here? Is there really a
microphone? Do I really have a body? The
standard view would be no. Uh we don't.
none of this would be real. My view is
actually that's wrong. And even if we
are in a simulation, all of this is
real. That's why I called this reality
2.0. New version of reality, different
version of reality, still reality. So,
so what's the difference between quote
unquote real world and the world that we
perceive? So, we interact with the world
to with the world by perceiving it.
It only really exists through the window
of our perception system and in our
mind. So, what's the difference between
something that's quote unquote real that
exists perhaps without us being there
and and uh the world as you perceive it?
Well, the world as we perceive it is a
very simplified and distorted version of
what's going on underneath. We already
know that from just thinking about
science. you know, you don't see too
many obviously quantum mechanical
effects in what we uh what we perceive,
but we still know quantum mechanics is
going on under all things. I like to
think the world we perceive is this very
kind of simplified
picture of colors and shapes existing in
in space and so on. We know there's a
that's what the philosopher Wilfrid
sellers called the manifest image. the
world as it seems to us. We already know
underneath all that is a very different
scientific image with atoms or quantum
wave functions or superstrings or
whatever the uh the latest thing is and
that's the ultimate scientific reality.
So I think of the simulation idea as
basically another hypothesis about what
the ultimate say quasi scientific or
metaphysical reality is going on
underneath the world of the manifest
image. world of the manifest image is
this very simple thing that we interact
with that's neutral on the underlying
stuff of reality science can help tell
us about that maybe philosophy can help
tell us about that too and if we
eventually take the red pill and find
out we're in a simulation my view is
that's just another view about what
reality is made of you know the
philosopher Emanuel Khan said what is
the nature of the thing in itself you
I've got a glass here and it's got all
these it appears to me a certain way a
certain shape shape. It's liquid. It's
clear.
He said, "What is the nature of the
thing in itself?" Well, I think of the
simulation idea. It's a hypothesis about
the nature of the thing in itself. It
turns out if we're in a simulation, the
thing in itself nature of this glass,
it's okay. It's actually a bunch of data
structures running on a uh on a computer
in the next universe up.
Yeah. That's what people tend to do when
they think about simulation. and they
think about our modern computers and
somehow uh trivially crudely just scaled
up in some sense. But do you think uh
the simulation I mean in order to
actually simulate something as
complicated as our universe that's made
up of molecules and atoms and particles
and quarks and maybe even strings? All
of that requires something just
infinitely many orders of magnitude more
of of um scale and complexity.
Do do you think we're even able to even
like conceptualize what it would take to
simulate our universe or does it just uh
slip into this idea that uh you
basically have to build a universe
something so big to simulate it? is is
it does it get this into this fuzzy area
that's not useful at all?
Yeah. Well, I mean there's obvious I
mean our universe is obviously
incredibly complicated and for us within
our universe to build a simulation of a
universe as complicated as ours is going
to have obvious problems here. If the
universe is finite, there's just no way
that's going to work. Maybe there's some
cute way to make it work. If the
universe is uh is uh is infinite, maybe
an infinite universe could somehow
simulate a copy of itself. But that's uh
that's going to be hard. Nonetheless,
just say we are in a simulation. I think
there's no particular reason why we have
to think the simulating universe has to
be anything like ours. You've said
before that uh it might be
so you could you could think of it in
turtles all the way down. you you could
think of uh the simulating universe
different than ours, but we ourselves
could also create another simulated
universe. So, you said that there could
be these kind of levels of universes.
And you've also mentioned this hilarious
idea, maybe tongue and cheek, maybe not,
that there may be simulations within
simulations, arbitrarily stacked levels,
and that there may be that we may be in
level 42.
Oh, yeah. along those stacks referencing
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe. If
we're indeed in a simulation within a
simulation at level 42,
what do you think level zero looks like?
The original
I would expect that level zero is truly
enormous. I mean, not just uh if it's
finite, it's some extraordinarily
large finite capacity. Much more likely
it's infinite. Maybe it's a maybe it's
got some very high set the cardality
that enables it to support just any
number of um any number of simulations.
So high degree of infinity at level
zero, slightly slightly smaller degree
of infinity at uh at level one. So by
the time you get down to us at level 42,
maybe there's plenty of room for lots of
simulations of finite capacity.
Um, if the top universe is only a small
finite capacity, then obviously that's
going to put very very serious limits on
how many simulations you're going to be
able to be able to get running. So I
think we can certainly confidently say
that if we're at level 42, then the top
level is pretty pretty damn big.
So it gets more and more constrained as
we get down levels, more and more uh
simplified and constrained and limited
in resources and you
Yeah, we still have plenty of capacity
here. What was it? uh Fineman said he
said there's plenty of room at the
bottom. You know, we're still uh you
know, we're still a number of levels
above the degree of where there's room
for fundamental computing, physical
computing capacity, quantum computing
capacity at the bottom level. So, we got
plenty of room to play with and make we
probably have plenty of room for
simulations of pretty sophisticated
universes. Perhaps none as complicated
as our universe, unless our universe is
is infinite, but still at the very least
for pretty serious finite universes, but
maybe universes somewhat simpler than
ours, unless of course we're prepared to
take certain shortcuts in the
simulation, which might then increase
the capacity significantly. Do you think
the the human mind, us people, in terms
of the complexity of simulation is at
the height of what the simulation might
be able to achieve? Like if you look at
incredible entities that could be
created in this universe of ours, do you
have an intuition about how incredible
human beings are on that scale?
I think we're pretty impressive, but
we're not that impressive.
Are we above average?
I mean I think kind of human beings are
at a certain point in the scale of
intelligence which made many things
possible. You know you get through um
evolution through single cell organisms
through you know fish and mammals and
primates and something happens once you
get to human beings. We've just reached
that level where we get to develop
language. We get to develop certain
kinds of culture and we get to develop
certain kinds of collective thinking
that has enabled all this amazing stuff
to happen. Science and literature and
engineering and and culture and uh and
so on. Still, we are just at the
beginning of that on the evolutionary
threshold. It's kind of like we just got
there, you know, who knows a few
thousand or tens of thousands of years
ago. We're probably just at the very
beginning for what's possible there. So,
I'm inclined to think among the scale of
intelligent beings, we're somewhere very
near the bottom. I would expect that,
for example, if we're in a if we're in a
simulation than the simulators who
created our got the capacity to be far
more sophisticated. For at level 42, who
knows what the ones at level zero are
like.
It's also possible that this is the
epitome of what is possible to achieve.
So we as human beings see ourselves
maybe as flawed, see all the
constraints, all the limitations. But
maybe that's the magical, the beautiful
thing. Maybe those limitations are the
essential elements for an interesting
sort of that edge of chaos, that
interesting existence that if you make
us much more intelligent, if if you uh
make us more powerful in any kind of
dimension of performance, maybe you lose
something fundamental that makes life
worth living. So you kind of have this
optimistic view that we're this little
baby that then there's so much growth
and potential, but this could also be
it. The most this is the most amazing
thing is us.
Maybe what you're saying is consistent
with what I'm saying. I mean, we could
still have levels of intelligence far
beyond us, but maybe those levels of
intelligence on your view would be kind
of boring. And you know, we get we kind
of get so good at everything that life
suddenly becomes undimensional. So we're
just inhabiting inhabiting this one spot
of like maximal romanticism in the
history of evolution. You get to humans
and it's like yeah and then years to
come our super intelligent descendants
are going to look back at us and say uh
those were the days when uh when they
just hit the point of inflection and
life was interesting. I am an optimist
so I'd like to think that you know if
there is super intelligence somewhere in
the uh in the future they'll figure out
how to make life super interesting and
super romantic. Well, you know what
they're going to do.
So, what they're going to do is they
realize how boring life is when you're
super intelligent. So, they create a new
level of assimulation
and sort of live through the things
they've created by watching them uh
stumble about in their flawed ways. So,
maybe that's so you create a new level
of a simulation every time you get
really bored with how smart. And
this would be kind of sad though cuz it
would show the peak of their existence
would be like watching simulations for
entertainment. That's like saying the
peak of our existence now is Netflix.
No, you know it's all right.
A flip side of that could be the peak of
our existence for many people having
children and watching them grow. That
becomes very meaningful.
Okay. You create a simulation that's
like creating a family.
Creating like well any kind of creation
is uh is kind of a powerful act. Do you
think it's easier to simulate the mind
or the universe? So, I've heard several
people including Nick Bosram think about
ideas of, you know, maybe you don't need
to simulate the universe, you can just
simulate the the human mind or in
general just the distinction between
simulating this the entirety of it, the
entirety of the physical world or just
simulating the mind.
Which one do you see as more
challenging?
Well, I think in some sense the answer
is is obvious. It has to be simpler to
simul simulate the mind than to simulate
the universe because the mind is part of
the universe. And in order to fully
simulate the universe, you're going to
have to simulate the mind. So unless
we're talking about partial simulations
and I guess the question is which comes
first? Does the mind come before the
universe or does the universe come
before the mind?
So the mind could just be an emergent
phenomena in this universe. So
simulation is a is an interesting thing
that you know it it's it's not like
creating a simulation perhaps requires
you to program every single thing that
happens in it.
It's just defining a set of initial
conditions and rules based on which it
behaves.
Mhm.
Uh simulating the mind requires you to
have a little bit more.
We're now in in a little bit of a crazy
land. But uh it it requires you to
understand the fundamentals of cognition
perhaps of consciousness of perception
of everything like that that's made
that's not created through some kind of
emergence
from basic physics laws but more
requires you to actually understand the
fundamentals of of the mind.
How about if we said simulate the brain
rather than rather than the mind? So the
brain is just a big physical system. The
universe is a giant physical system. To
simulate the universe, at the very
least, you're going to have to simulate
the brains as well as all the other
physical systems within it. And um you
know, it's not obvious there's that the
problems are any worse for the uh for
the brain than for it's particularly
complex physical system, but if we can
simulate arbitrary physical systems, we
can simulate brains. There is this
further question of whether when you
simulate a brain will that bring along
all the features of the mind with it
like will you get consciousness will you
get thinking will you get free will and
so on and that's that's something
philosophers have have argued over for
years my own view is if you sim if you
simulate the brain well enough that will
also simulate the mind but yeah there's
plenty of people who would say no you'd
merely get a like a zombie system a
simulation of a brain without any true
consciousness.
But for you, you put together a brain,
the consciousness comes with it,
arrives.
Yeah, I don't think it's obvious.
That's your intuition.
My view is roughly that yeah, what is
responsible for consciousness? It's in
the patterns of information processing
and so on rather than say the biology
that it's made of. There's certainly
plenty of people out there who think
consciousness has to be say biological.
So if you merely replicate the patterns
of information processing in a
non-biological substrate, you'll miss
what's crucial for consciousness. I
mean, I think just don't think there's
any particular reason to think that
biology is special here. You can imagine
substituting the biology for
non-biological systems, say silicon
circuits that play the same role, the
behavior will continue to be the same.
And you know I think just thinking about
what is the true when I think about the
connection the isomorphisms between
consciousness and the brain the deepest
connections to me seem to connect
consciousness to patterns of information
processing not to specific biology. So I
at least adopted as my working
hypothesis that basically it's the
computation and the information that
matters for consciousness. At the same
time we don't understand consciousness.
So
all this should be wrong. So the the
computation, the flow, the processing,
manipulation of information,
the the process is where the
consciousness, the software is where the
consciousness comes from, not the
hardware. Roughly the software, yeah,
the patterns of information processing
at least in the uh in the hardware,
which we can view as as software. It may
not be something you can just like
program and load and uh erase and so on
in the way we can with ordinary software
but it's something at the level of
information processing rather than at a
level of implementation. So on that what
do you think of the the experience of
self just the experience of the world in
a in a virtual world in virtual reality?
Is it possible that we can create
sort of um
offsprings of our consciousness by
existing in a virtual world long enough?
So yeah, c can we be conscious in in the
same kind of deep way that we are in
this real world by hanging out in a
virtual world? Yeah. Well, the kind of
virtual worlds we have now are, you
know, are interesting but limited in
certain ways. In particular, they rely
on us having a brain and so on, which is
outside the virtual world. Maybe I'll
strap on my VR headset or just hang out
in a in a virtual world on a on a
screen, but my brain and then the phys
my physical environment might be
simulated if I'm in a virtual world, but
right now there's no attempt to simulate
my brain. I might there might be some
non-player characters in these uh in
these virtual worlds that have simulated
cognitive systems of certain kinds that
dictate their behavior, but you know,
mostly they're pretty simple right now.
Well, I mean, some people are trying to
combine put a bit of AI in their
non-player characters to make them uh to
make them uh them smarter. But for now,
um inside virtual worlds, the actual
thinking is interestingly distinct from
the physics of those virtual worlds. In
a way, actually, I like to think this is
kind of reminiscent of the way that
Decart thought our physical world was.
There's physics and there's the mind and
they're separate. Now we now we think
the mind is somehow somehow connected to
physics pretty deeply. But in these
virtual worlds, there's a physics of a
virtual world and then there's this
brain which is totally outside the
virtual world that controls it and
interacts it when anyone anyone
exercises agency in a video game. And
you know that's actually somebody
outside the virtual world moving a
controller controlling the interaction
of things inside the virtual world. So
right now in virtual worlds the mind is
somehow outside the world. But you could
imagine in the future once we get once
we have developed serious AI, artificial
general intelligence and so on then we
could come to virtual worlds which have
enough sophistication you could actually
simulate a brain or have a genuine AGI
which would then presumably be able to
act in equally sophisticated ways maybe
even more sophisticated ways inside the
virtual world to how it might in the
physical world. And then the question's
going to come along that'll be kind of a
a VR inter a virtual world internal
um intelligence. And then the question
is could they have consciousness,
experience, intelligence, free will,
yes,
all the things that we have. And again,
my view is
I don't see why not
to linger in it a little bit. I I find
virtual reality really
incredibly powerful. just even the crude
virtuality we have now of perhaps
there's a there's a psychological
effects that make some people more
amendable to virtual worlds than others
but I find myself wanting to stay in
virtual worlds for for long periods yes
with with a headset or on a on a desktop
no with a headset. really interesting
because uh I am totally addicted to you
using the internet and things on a uh on
a desktop but when it comes to VR with a
headset I don't typically use it for
more than 10 or 20 minutes there's
something just slightly aversive about
it I find so I don't right now even
though I have Oculus Rift and Oculus
Quest and HTC Vive and Samsung this and
that want to stay in that world
not for extended periods you you
actually find yourself out there
something about like It's a both a
combination of just imagination and
considering the possibilities of where
this goes in in the future. It it feels
like I want to
um almost prepare my brain for like it I
want to explore sort of Disneyland when
it's first being built
in the early days. And it feels like I'm
walking around almost
imagining the the possibilities and
something through that process allows my
mind to really enter into that world.
But you say that the brain is external
to that virtual world. It is strictly
speaking true.
But if you're in VR and you do brain
surgery on an avatar and you're going to
open up that skull, what are you going
to find? Sorry, nothing there. The brain
is elsewhere.
You don't think it's possible to kind of
separate them? And I don't mean in a
sense like the cart like a hard
separation, but basically do you think
it's possible with the brain outside of
the virtual
when you're wearing a headset
create a new consciousness
for prolonged periods of times? really
feel like really exper like forget that
your brain is outside.
So this is okay this is going to be the
case where the brain is still outside
still outside
but could living in the VR I mean I mean
we already find this right with video
games
exactly completely immersive
and you get taken up by living in those
worlds and it becomes your reality for a
while.
So they're not completely immersive
they're just very immersive you don't
forget the external world. No
exactly. So that's what I'm asking. Do
you think it's almost possible to really
forget the external world?
Really, really immerse yourself.
What to forget completely? Why would we
forget? You know, we got pretty good
memories. Maybe you can stop paying
attention to the external world. But you
know that this already happens a lot. I
go to work and maybe I'm not paying
attention to my home life. I go to a I
go to a movie and I'm immersed in that.
So that degree of immersion absolutely.
But we still have the capacity to
remember it to completely forget the
external world. I'm thinking that would
probably take some I don't know some
pretty serious drugs or something to
make your to make your brain do that.
Is it possible? So, I mean, I guess I'm
getting at is consciousness
truly a property that's tied to the the
physical brain
or can it can you create sort of
different offspring, copies of
consciousnesses based on the worlds that
you enter?
Well, the way we're doing it now, at
least with a standard VR, there's just
one brain
interacts with the physical world, plays
a video game, puts on a video headset,
interacts with this virtual world. And I
think we typically say there's one
consciousness here that nonetheless
undergoes different environments, takes
on different characters, you know, in
different environments. This is already
something that happens in the
non-verirtual world. you know, I might
interact one way in my home life, my
work life, my social life,
um, and so on. So, at the very least,
that will happen in a in a virtual world
very naturally. People might people have
people sometimes adopt a character of
avatars very different from themselves,
maybe even a different gender, different
race, different social background. So,
that much is certainly possible. I would
see that as a single consciousness
taking on different personas. So if you
want literal splitting of consciousness
into multiple copies, I think it's going
to take something more radical than
that. Like you know, maybe you can run
different simulations
of your brain in different realities and
then expose them to different histories
and then you know you'd split yourself
into 10 different simulated copies which
then undergo different environments and
then ultimately do become 10 very
different consciousnesses. Maybe that
could happen. But now we're not talking
about something that's possible in the
near term. We're gonna have to have
brain stimulations and AGI for that to
happen.
Got it. So, uh before any of that
happens, it's fundamentally you see it
as a singular consciousness. Even though
it's experiencing different
environments, virtue or not, it's still
connected to the same set of memories,
same set of experiences and therefore
one sort of joint
uh conscious
system.
Yeah. or at least no more multiple than
the kind of multiple consciousness that
we get from inhab inhabiting different
environments
in a non-verirtual world.
So you said as a child you were a music
color
senate senate. So where songs had colors
for you? So what songs had what colors?
You know this is funny. Um, I didn't pay
much attention to this at the time, but
I'd listen to a piece of music and I'd
get some kind of imagery of a uh of a
kind of uh of a kind of of color. The
weird thing is mostly they were kind of
murky dark greens and olive browns and
the colors weren't all that interesting.
I don't know what the reason is. I mean,
my theory is that maybe it's like
different chords and tones provided
different colors, and they all tended to
get mixed together into these somewhat
uninteresting browns and greens, but
every now and then there'd be something
that had a really pure color. There's
just a few that I that I remember. There
was a here, there, and everywhere by the
Beatles was bright red and has this, you
know, very distinctive tonality and its
chord structure at the uh at the
beginning. So, that was bright red.
There was this song by the Alan Parson's
project called Ammonia Avenue that was
uh that was kind of a pure a pure blue.
Anyway, I've got no idea how this
happened. I didn't even pay that much
attention until it went away when I was
about 20. This senesthesia often goes
away. So, is it purely just the
perception of a particular color or was
there a positive or negative experience?
like was blue associated with a positive
and red with a negative or is it simply
the perception of color associated with
some characteristic of the song?
For me, I don't remember a lot of
association with uh with emotion or with
value. It was just this kind of weird
and
interesting fact. I mean, at the
beginning, I thought this was something
that happened to everyone. Songs of
colors. Maybe I mentioned it once or
twice and people said, "Uh, nope." uh
that it was like I thought it was kind
of cool when there was one that had one
of these especially pure colors but only
much later once I became you know a grad
student thinking about the mind did I
read about this phenomenon called
synesthesia and it's like hey that's
what I had and now I occasionally talk
about it in my classes in intro class
and it still happens sometimes a student
comes up and says hey I have that I
never knew about that I never knew it
had a name
you said that it went went away at age
20 or so
and um that you have a journal entry
from around then saying songs don't have
colors anymore. What happened?
What happened? Yeah, it was definitely
sad that it was gone. In retrospect,
it's like, hey, that's cool. The colors
have gone.
Yeah. Do you can you think about that
for a little bit? Do you miss those
experiences? because it's a
fundamentally different sets of
experiences that you no longer have
or do you or is it just a nice thing to
have had? You don't see them as that
fundamentally different than you
visiting a new country and experiencing
new environments. I guess for me when I
had these experiences they were somewhat
marginal. They were like a little bonus
kind of experience. I know there are
people who have much more serious forms
of senesthesia than this for whom it's
absolutely central to their lives. I
know people who when they experience new
people they have colors maybe they have
tastes and so on. Every time they see
writing it has uh it has colors. Some
people whenever they hear music it's got
a it's got a certain um really rich
color pattern and you know for some
sites it's absolutely central. I think
if they lost it they'd be devastated.
Again, for me, it just becomes a very
very mild form of synthesiz. It's like,
yeah, it's like those interesting
experiences.
Yeah.
Um, you know, you might get under
different altered states of
consciousness and and so on. It's kind
of cool, but you know, not necessarily
the single most important experiences in
your life.
Got it. So let's try to go to the very
simplest question that you've answered
many time but perhaps the simplest
things can help us reveal
even in time some some new ideas so what
in your view is consciousness what is
qualia what is the hard problem of
consciousness
consciousness I mean the word is used
many ways but the kind of consciousness
that I'm interested in is basically
subjective experience
what it feels like from the inside to be
a human being or any other conscious
being. I mean, there's something it's
like to be me right now. I have visual
images that I'm experiencing. I'm
hearing my voice. I've got maybe some
emotional tone. I've got a stream of
thoughts running through my head. These
are all things that I experience from
the first person point of view. who have
sometimes called this the inner movie in
the mind. It's not a perfect it's not a
perfect metaphor. It's not like a movie
in every ways and in every way and it's
very rich but yeah it's just direct
subjective experience and I call that
cons consciousness or sometimes
philosophers use the word qualia which
you suggested people tend to use the
word qualia for things like the
qualities of things like colors
redness the experience of redness versus
the experience of greenness the
experience of one taste or one smell
versus another experience of the quality
of pain and A lot of consciousness is
the experience of those of those uh
those qualities.
Well, consciousness is bigger. The
entirety of any kinds of experience
consciousness of thinking is not
obviously qualia. It's not like specific
qualities like redness or greenness, but
still I'm thinking about my hometown.
I'm thinking about what I'm going to do
later on. Maybe there's still something
running through my my head which is
subjective experience. Maybe it goes
beyond those qualities or qualia.
Philosophers sometimes use the word
phenomenal consciousness
for consciousness in this sense. I mean
people also talk about access
consciousness, being able to access
information in your mind, reflective
consciousness, being able to think about
yourself. But it looks like the really
mysterious one, the one that really gets
people going is phenomenal
consciousness. The fact that all this
the fact that there's subjective
experience and all this feels like
something at all. And then the hard
problem is how is it that why is it that
there is phenomenal consciousness at all
and how is it that physical processes in
a brain could give you subjective
experience? It looks like on the face of
it you could have all this big
complicated physical system in a brain
running and without a given subjective
experience at all and yet we do have
subjective experience. So the hard
problem is just explain that
explain how that comes about. We haven't
been able to build machines where a red
light goes on that says it's not
conscious. So
how does how do how do we actually
create that or how do humans do it and
how do we ourselves do it? But
we do every now and then create machines
that can do this. You know we create
babies.
Yes.
That are that are conscious. They got
these brains and that brain does produce
consciousness. But even be even though
we can create it, we still don't
understand why it happens. Maybe
eventually we'll be able to create
machines which as a matter of fact AI
machines which as a matter of fact are
conscious, but that won't necessarily
make the hard problem go away anymore
than it does with babies cuz we still
want to know how and why is it that
these processes give you consciousness.
you know, you just made me realize for
for a second, maybe it's a totally dumb
realization.
Uh but nevertheless, that um it's a
useful way to think about the creation
of consciousness is looking at a baby.
So that there's a certain point
at which that baby is not conscious.
Mhm.
this sort of uh the baby starts from
maybe I don't I don't know from a few
cells right there's a certain point at
which it becomes consciousness arrives
it's conscious of course we can't know
exactly that line but that's a useful
idea that we do we do create
consciousness
again a really dumb thing for me to say
but it not until now did I realize we do
engineer consciousness we we get to
watch the process
happen. We don't know which point it
happens
or where it is, but you know, we do see
the birth of consciousness.
Yeah. I mean, there's a question of
course is whether babies are conscious
when they're born. And it used to be, it
seems, at least some people thought they
weren't, which is why they didn't give
anesthetics to newborn babies when they
circumcised them. And so now people
think, oh, that would be incredibly
cruel. Yeah.
Of course, uh, of course babies feel
pain. And now the dominant view is that
uh the babies can feel pain. Actually my
partner Claudia works on this whole
issue of whether there's consciousness
in babies and of uh of what kind. And
she certainly thinks that newborn babies
um you know come into the world with
some degree of consciousness. Of course
then you can just extend the question
backwards to fetuses and suddenly you're
into politically controversial
exactly
territory. But um you know there the
question also arises in the animal
kingdom. you know what where does
consciousness start or stop? Is there a
line in the animal kingdom where you
know the first conscious organisms are?
It's interesting over time people are
becoming more and more liberal about
ascribing consciousness to animals.
People used to think ah maybe only
mammals could be conscious. Now most
people seem to think sure fish are
conscious they can feel pain. And now
we're arguing over insects. You'll find
people out there who say plants have
some degree of uh of consciousness. So,
you know, who knows where it's going to
end. The far end of this chain is the
view that every physical system has some
degree of consciousness. Philosophers
call that pansychism. You know, I I take
that view. I mean, that's a fascinating
way to view reality. So, if you could
talk about, if you can linger on
pansychism for a little bit, what what
does it mean? So, it's not just plants
are conscious. I mean, it's that
consciousness is a fundamental fabric of
reality.
What does that mean to you? How are we
supposed to think about that?
Well, we're used to the idea that some
things in the world are fundamental,
right? Uh in physics, we take things
like space or time or space time, mass,
charge as fundamental properties of the
universe. You don't reduce them to
something simpler. You take those for
granted. You've got some laws that
connect them. Here is how mass and space
and time evolve. theories like you know
relativity or quantum mechanics or some
future theory that will unify them both.
But everyone says you got to take some
things as fundamental and if you can't
explain one thing in terms of the
previous fundamental things you have to
expand.
Maybe something like this happened with
Maxwell
um you ended up with fundamental
principles of electromagnetism and took
charge as fundamental cuz turned out
that was the best way to explain it. So
I at least take seriously the
possibility something like that could
happen with consciousness. Take it as a
fundamental property like space, time
and mass and instead of trying to
explain consciousness wholly in terms of
the evolution of space, time and and
mass and so on, take it as a primitive
and then connect it to everything else
by some fundamental laws cuz I mean
there's basic there's this basic problem
that the physics we have now looks great
for solving the easy problems of
consciousness which are all about
behavior, right? uh struct they give us
a complicated structure and dynamics
that tell us how things are going to
behave, what kind of observable um
behavior they'll produce, which is great
for the problems of explaining how we
walk and how we talk and so on. Those
are the easy problems of consciousness.
But the hard problem was this problem
about subjective experience just doesn't
look like that kind of problem about
structure, dynamics, how things behave.
So it's hard to see how existing physics
is going to give you a full explanation
of that. Certainly trying to get a
physics view of consciousness. Yes,
there there has to be a connecting point
and it could be at the very eximatic at
the very beginning level. But uh I mean
first of all there's a crazy idea
that uh sort of uh everything has
properties of consciousness.
So at that point the word consciousness
is already beyond the reach of our
current understanding like far because
it's so far from at least uh for me
maybe you can correct me
it's far from the experience experiences
that we have that I have as a human
being that it to say that everything is
conscious that means
uh that means there that basically
another way to put that if if that's
true then we understand almost nothing
about that as fundamental aspect of the
world.
How do you feel about saying an ant is
conscious? Do you get the same reaction
to that or is that something you can
understand?
I can understand ant. I can't understand
uh an atom or plant
plant. So I'm I'm comfortable with
living things on earth.
Mhm. being cautious because there's some
kind of agency
where they're similar size to me
and uh they can be born and they can die
and that is understandable
intuitively. Of course, you
anthropomorphize.
You put yourself in the place of the
plant.
Uh
but I can understand it. I mean I'm I'm
not like um I don't believe actually
that plants are conscious or that plants
suffer but I can understand that kind of
belief that kind of idea.
How do you feel about how do you feel
about robots like the kind of robots we
have now if I told you like that you
know a Roomba has some degree of
consciousness
uh or some uh you know deep neural
network.
I could understand that a Roomba has
consciousness. I just had spent all day
at iroot. Uh I and I mean I personally
love robots and I have a deep connection
with robots. So I can I also probably
anthropomorphize them. But there's
something about the physical
object. So there's a difference than a
neural network. A neural network running
a software. To me the physical object
something about the human experience
allows me to really see that physical
object as an entity. And if it moves and
moves in a way that it there's a like I
didn't program it where it feels that
it's acting based on its own perception
and yes self-awareness and and
consciousness even if it's a Roomba then
you start to assign it some agency some
consciousness.
So, but to say that pansychism that
consciousness is a fundamental property
of reality
is a much bigger statement.
Mhm.
That it it's like turtles all the way.
It's like every it's it doesn't end. The
whole thing is so like how I know it's
full of mystery. Uh but
if you can linger on it like h how would
it how do you think about reality if
consciousness is a fundamental part of
its fabric? The way you get there is
from thinking can we explain
consciousness given the existing
fundamentals and then if you can't as at
least right now it looks like uh then
you got to add something. It doesn't
follow that you have to add
consciousness. Here's another
interesting possibility is well we'll
add something else. Let's call it
protoconciousness. Mhm.
or X,
right?
And then it turns out space, time, mass
plus X will somehow collectively give
you the possibility for uh for
consciousness. I don't rule out that
view either. I call that pan protocism
cuz maybe there's some other property
protoconsciousness at the bottom level.
And if you can't imagine there's
actually genuine consciousness at the
bottom level, I think we should be open
to the idea there's this other thing X,
maybe we can't imagine that somehow
gives you consciousness. But if we are
playing along with the idea that there
really is genuine consciousness at the
bottom level, of course this is going to
be way out and speculative. But you know
at least in say if it was classical
physics then we'd have to you'd end up
saying well every little atom every with
you know a bunch of particles in
spaceime each of these particles has
some kind of consciousness whose
structure mirrors maybe their physical
properties like its mass, it charge, its
velocity and so on. and the structure of
its consciousness would roughly
correspond to that and the physical
interactions between particles. I mean
there's this old worry about physics
kind I mentioned this before in this
issue about the manifest image. We don't
really find out about the intrinsic
nature of things. Physics tells us about
how a particle relates to other
particles and interacts. It doesn't tell
us about what the particle is in itself.
That was K's thing in itself. So here's
a view.
Um a the nature in itself of a particle
is something mental. A particle is
actually a conscious a little conscious
subject with uh with properties of its
consciousness that correspond to its
physical properties. The laws of physics
are actually ultimately relating these
properties of conscious subjects. So in
this view a Newtonian world actually
would be a vast collection of little
conscious subjects at the bottom level.
way way simpler than we are without free
will or rationality or anything like
that. But that's what the universe would
be like. Now, of course, that's a vastly
speculative view. No, no particular
reason to think it's correct.
Furthermore, non-newtonian physics, say
quantum mechanical wave function,
suddenly it starts to look different.
It's not a vast collection of conscious
subjects. Maybe the there's ultimately
one big wave function for the whole
universe. corresponding to that might be
something more like a a single conscious
mind whose structure corresponds to the
structure of the wave function. People
sometimes call this cosmos psychism. And
now of course we're in the realm of
extremely speculative philosophy.
There's no direct evidence for this. But
yeah, but if you want a picture of what
that universe would be like, think yeah,
giant cosmic mind with enough richness
and structure among it to replicate all
the structure of physics.
I think therefore I am at the level of
particles and with quantum mechanics at
the level of the wave function and it's
um it's kind of an exciting
beautiful possibility of course way out
of reach of physics currently. It is
interesting that some neuroscientists
are beginning to take pansychism
seriously that you find consciousness
even in very in very simple systems. So
for example, the integrated information
theory of consciousness that a lot of
neuroscientists are taking seriously.
Actually I just got this new book by
Kristoff Cook just came in the feeling
of life itself why consciousness is
widespread but can't be computed. He
likes he basically endorses a pansyus
view where you get consciousness with
the degree of information processing or
integrated information processing in a
simple in a system and even very very
simple systems like a couple of
particles will have some degree of this.
So he ends up with some degree of
consciousness in all matter and the
claim is that this theory can actually
explain a bunch of stuff about the
connection between the brain and
consciousness. Now that's very
controversial. I think it's very very
early days in the science of
consciousness. It's interesting that
it's not just philosophy that that might
lead you in this direction but there are
ways of thinking quasi scientifically
that lead you there too
but maybe different than pensychism.
What do you think? So Alan Watts has
this quote that I'd like to ask you
about. Uh the quote is through our eyes
the universe is perceiving itself.
Through our ears, the universe is
listening to its harmonies. We are the
witnesses to which the universe becomes
conscious of its glory, of its
magnificence.
So that's not pansychism.
Do you think that we are essentially the
tools, the senses the universe created
to be conscious of itself? It's an
interesting idea. Of course, if you went
for the giant cosmic mind view, then the
universe was conscious
all along. It didn't need us. We're just
little components of the universal
consciousness. Likewise, if you believe
in pansarchism,
then there was some little degree of
consciousness at the bottom level all
along and we were just a more complex
form of consciousness. So I think maybe
the quote you mentioned works better if
you're not a pansychist, you're not a
cosmos psychist, you think consciousness
just exists at this uh at this
intermediate level. And of course that's
the orthodox view
that you would say is the the common
view. So is your own view with
pansychism
a rarer view? I think it's generally
regarded certainly as a speculative view
held by a fairly small minority of at
least theorists. Philosopher most
philosophers and most scientists who
think about consciousness are not
pansychist. There's been a bit of a
movement in that direction for the last
10 years or so. Seems to be quite
popular especially among the the younger
generation, but it's still very
definitely a minority view. many people
think is totally batshit crazy to use
the technical term but um
it's a philosophical term. Yeah. So the
orthodox view I think is still
consciousness is something that humans
have and some good number of non-human
animals have and maybe AIs might have
one day but it's restricted on that
view. Then there was no consciousness at
the start of the universe. There may be
none at the end but is this thing which
happened at some point in the history of
the universe. consciousness developed
and yes it's on that's a very amazing
event on this view because many people
are inclined to think consciousness is
what somehow gives meaning to our lives
without consciousness there'd be no
meaning no true value no good versus bad
and so on so with the advent of
consciousness suddenly the universe went
from meaningless to somehow meaningful
why did this happen I guess the quote
you mentioned was somehow this was
somehow destined to happen because the
universe needed to have consciousness
within it to have value and have meaning
and maybe you could combine that with a
theistic view or a teological view. The
universe was inexurably evolving towards
consciousness. Actually my colleague
here at NYU Tom Nagel wrote a book
called mind and cosmos a few years ago
where he argued for this teological view
of evolution toward consciousness saying
this led to problems for Darwinism. This
got him on you know this is very very
controversial. Most people didn't agree
I don't myself agree with this
teological view but it is a it's at
least a beautiful speculative view
of the uh of the cosmos. What do you
think people experience?
What do they seek when they believe in
God from this kind of perspective?
I'm not an expert on thinking about
God and religion. I'm not myself
religious at all. When people sort of
pray, communicate with God, what
whichever form, I'm not speaking to sort
of the practices and the rituals of
religion. I mean the actual experience
of that people really have a deep
connection with God in some cases.
What do you think that experience
is? It's so common at least throughout
the history of civilization
that
it seems like we uh seek that at the
very least. It's an interesting
conscious experience that people have
when they experience religious awe or
prayer and so on. And neuroscientists
have tried to examine what bits of the
uh the brain are active and so on. But
yeah, that there's this deeper question
of what is what are people looking for
when they're doing this. And like I
said, I've got no real expertise on
this, but it does seem that one thing
people are after is a sense of meaning
and value, a sense of connection to
something greater than themselves that
will give their lives meaning and value.
And maybe the thought is if there is a
god then god somehow as a universal
consciousness who has invested this
universe with meaning
and some connection to god might give
your life meaning that's a I can kind of
see the see the attractions of that but
still makes me wonder why is it exactly
that a universal consciousness uni god
would be needed to give the to give the
world meaning if I mean if universal
consciousness can give the world
meaning. Why can't local consciousness
give the world meaning too? So I think
my consciousness gives my world
is the thing is the origin of of meaning
for your world.
Yeah. I experience things as good or
bad, happy,
sad, interesting, important. So my
consciousness invests this world with
meaning. Without any consciousness,
maybe it would be a bleak, meaningless
universe. But I don't see why I need
someone else's consciousness or even
God's consciousness to give this uh this
universe meaning. Here we are local
creatures with our own subjective
experiences. I think we can give the
universe meaning ourselves. So I mean
maybe to some people that feels
inadequate. Yeah. Our own local
consciousness is somehow too puny and
insignificant to invest any of this with
cosmic significance. And maybe God gives
you a sense of cosmic significance, but
I'm just speculating here.
So the, you know, it's a really
interesting idea that consciousness is
the thing that makes life meaningful.
If you could maybe just just briefly
explore that for a second. So I suspect
just from listening to you now you mean
in an almost trivial sense just the the
day-to-day experiences of life have
because of you attach identity to it.
Mhm. they become
well I I guess I want to ask
something I I would uh always wanted to
ask a legit world worldrenowned
philosopher what is the meaning of life
so I suspect you don't mean
consciousness gives any kind of greater
meaning to it all
and more to dayto-day but is there
greater meaning to it all
I I think life has meaning for us
because we are conscious. So without
consciousness, no meaning. Consciousness
invests our life with meaning. So
consciousness is the source of my view
of the meaning of life. But I wouldn't
say consciousness itself is the meaning
of life. I'd say what's meaningful in
life is basically what we find
meaningful. What we experience as
meaningful. So if you find meaning and
fulfillment and value in say
intellectual work like understanding
then that's your that's a very
significant part of the meaning of life
for you. If you find it in social
connections or in raising a family then
that's the meaning of life for you. The
meaning kind of comes from what you
value as a conscious creature. So I
think there's no on this view there's no
universal solution
you no universal answer to the question
what is the meaning of life? The meaning
of life is where you find it as a
conscious creature. But it's
consciousness that somehow makes value
possible. Experiencing some things as
good or as bad or as meaningful
some comes from within consciousness.
So you think consciousness is a crucial
component ingredient of having gi
assigning value to things. I mean, there
kind of a fairly strong intuition that
without consciousness, there wouldn't
really be any value. If we just had a
purely a universe of unconscious
creatures, would anything be better or
worse than anything else? Certainly,
when it comes to ethical dilemmas, you
know, you know about the old uh the old
trolley problem. Do you uh do you kill
one person or do you switch to the other
track to kill uh kill five? Well, I've
got a variant on this. the zombie
trolley problem where there's one
conscious being on uh on one track and
five
humanoid zombies, let's make them
robots.
Yeah.
Who are not who are not conscious on the
uh on the other track?
Do you uh given that choice, do you kill
the one conscious being or the five
unconscious
robots? Most people have a fairly clear
intuition here.
Yeah.
Kill the uh kill the unconscious beings
because they basically they don't have a
meaningful life. They're not really
persons,
conscious beings,
of course, at all.
Of course, we don't have good intuition
about
something like an unconscious being. So,
in philosophical terms, you refer to as
a zombie.
It's a useful
thought experiment, construction in
philosophical terms, but we don't yet
have them.
So that's kind of what we may be able to
create with robots.
And I don't necessarily know what that
even means.
Yeah. Merely hypothetical for now.
They're just a thought experiment. They
may never be possible. I mean the
extreme case of a zombie is a being
which is physically functionally
behaviorally identical to me but not
conscious. That's a mere I don't think
that could ever be built in this
universe. The question is just could we
does that hypothetically make sense?
That's kind of a useful contrast class
to raise questions like why aren't we
zombies? How does it come about that
we're conscious and we're not like that?
But there are less extreme versions of
this like robots which are maybe not
physically identical to us, maybe not
even functionally identical to us. Maybe
they've got a different architecture,
but they can do a lot of sophisticated
things, maybe carry on a conversation,
but they're not conscious. That's not so
far out. We've got simple computer
systems at least tending in that
direction now and presumably
this is going to get get more and more
sophisticated over uh years to come
where we may have some pretty it's at
least quite straightforward to conceive
of some pretty sophisticated robot
systems that can use language and be
fairly high functioning without
consciousness at all. Then I stipulate
that. I mean, we of course there's this
tricky
question of how you would know whether
they're conscious. But let's say we've
somehow solved that and we know that
these high functioning robots aren't
conscious. Then the question is, do they
have moral status? Does it matter how we
treat them?
Um, what does moral status mean? So
does basically it's that question. Can
they suffer? Does it matter how we treat
them? We'd be, for example, if we if if
I mistreat this glass, this cup by uh by
shattering it,
then that's bad. Why is it bad, though?
It's going to make a mess. It's going to
be annoying for me and my partner um and
so on. It's not bad for the cup. No one
would say the cup itself has moral
status. Hey, you you hurt the cup. Um
and that's uh that's doing it a moral
harm. Um likewise, plants. Well, again,
if they're not conscious, most people
think if by uprooting a plant, you're
not harming it. But if a being is
conscious, on the other hand, then you
are harming it. So Siri or um I dare not
say the uh the the name of Alexa
anyway. So, we don't think we're uh
we're morally harming Alexa by turning
her off or disconnecting her or even
destroying her, whether it's the system
or the uh or the underlying software
system because we don't really think
she's conscious. On the other hand, you
move to like the the disembodied being
in the moving in the movie her Samantha.
I guess she was kind of presented as
conscious and then if you if you
destroyed her, you'd certainly be
committing a serious harm. So I think
our strong sense is if a being is
conscious and can undergo subjective
experiences then it matters morally how
we treat them. So if a robot is
conscious it matters but if a robot is
not conscious then they're basically
just meat or a machine and it uh and it
and it doesn't matter. So I think at
least maybe how we think about this
stuff is fundamentally wrong. But I
think a a lot of people who think about
this stuff seriously including people
who think about say the moral treatment
of animals and so on come to the view
that consciousness is ultimately kind of
the line between systems that where we
have to take them into account in
thinking morally about how we act and
systems for which we don't. And I I
think I've seen you either write or talk
about the demonstration of consciousness
from a system like that, from a system
like Alexa or um a conversational agent
that what you would be looking for is
kind of at the very basic level for the
system to
have an awareness that I'm just a
program and yet why do I experience
this?
Mhm. and or or not to have that
experience, but to communicate that to
you. So that's what us humans would
sound like if you all of a sudden woke
up one day like Kafka, right? In a body
of a bug or something, but in in a
computer, you all of a sudden realize
you don't have a body and yet you would
feeling what you were feeling. You would
probably say those kinds of things. Mhm.
So do you think a system essentially
becomes conscious by
convincing us that it's conscious
h
through the words that I just mentioned?
So by being confused about the fact that
uh why am I having these experiences?
So basically
I don't think this is what makes you
conscious but I do think being puzzled
about consciousness is a very good sign
that a system is conscious. So if I
encountered a robot that actually seemed
to be genuinely puzzled by its own
mental states and saying, "Yeah, I have
all these weird experiences and I don't
see how to explain them. I know I'm a
just a set of silicon circuits, but I
don't see how that would give you my
consciousness." I would at least take
that as some evidence that there's some
consciousness going on there. I don't
think a system needs to be puzzled about
consciousness to be conscious. Many
people aren't puzzled by their
consciousness. Animals don't seem to be
puzzled at all. I still think they're
conscious. So, I don't think that's a
requirement on consciousness. But I do
think if we're looking for signs for
consciousness, say in AI systems, one of
the things that will help convince me
that AI system is conscious is if it
shows signs of it, if it shows signs of
introspectively recognizing something
like consciousness and finding this
philosophically puzzling in the way that
uh the way that that we do. It's such an
interesting thought though because a lot
of people sort of would uh at the
shallow level criticize the touring test
for language that it's essentially
uh what I heard like
Dan Dennett criticize it in this kind of
way which is it's really puts a lot of
emphasis on lying.
Yeah. And
being able to being able to imitate
human beings. Yeah. There's this uh
there's this cartoon of the AI system
studying for the Turing test. I just got
to read this book called Talk Like a
Human. It's like, man, why do I have to
waste my time learning how to imitate
humans? Maybe the AI system is going to
be way beyond the hard problem of
consciousness. And it's going to be this
like, why do I need to waste my time
pretending that I recognize the hard
problem of consciousness to uh in order
for people to recognize me as conscious?
Yeah, it just feels like I guess the
question is, do you think there's a we
can ever really create a test for
consciousness? because it it feels like
we're very humanentric.
And so the only way we would be
convinced
that something is conscious is by is
basically the thing demonstrates
the illusion of consciousness.
That we can never really know whether
it's conscious or not. And in fact
that almost feels like it doesn't matter
then
or does it still matter to you that
something is conscious or it
demonstrates consciousness. You still
see that fundamental distinction.
I think to a lot of people whether a
system is conscious or not matters
hugely for many things like how we treat
it can it suffer and so on. But still
that leaves open the question how can we
ever know? And it's true that it's
awfully hard to see how we can know for
sure whether a system is conscious. I
suspect that sociologically the thing
that's going to convince us that a
system is conscious is in part things
like social interaction, conversation
and so on where they seem to be
conscious. They talk about their
conscious states or just talk about
being happy or sad or finding things
meaningful or being in pain. that will
tend to convince us if we don't the
system genuinely seems to be conscious
we don't treat it as such eventually
it's going to seem like a strange form
of racism or speciesism or somehow
not to acknowledge them as
I truly believe that by the way I I I
believe that there is going to be
something akin to the civil rights
movement but for robots
um I think the moment you have a roomba
say please don't kick me that hurts just
say it.
Yeah,
I think that will fundamentally
change the fabric of our society.
I think you're probably right. Although
it's going to be very tricky because
just say we're in we've got the
technology where these conscious beings
can just be mult created and multiplied
by the thousands by by flicking a
switch.
So, and the legal status is going to be
different, but ultimately the moral
status ought to be the same. And yeah,
the civil rights issue is going to be a
huge mess.
So if one day somebody clones you,
another very real possibility.
Um, in fact, I find the conversation
between two copies of David Chalmer's
Mhm.
quite interesting.
Uh,
scary thought.
Just
who is this idiot? He's not making any
sense. So what uh do you think he would
be conscious?
I do think he would be conscious. I do
think in some sense I'm not sure it
would be me. They would be two different
beings at this point. I think they both
be conscious and they both have many of
the same mental
properties. I think they both in a way
have the same moral status. It'll be
wrong to hurt either of them or to kill
them and so on. Still, there's some
sense in which probably their legal
status would have to be different. If
I'm the original and that one's just a
clone, then, you know, creating a clone
of me, presumably the clone doesn't, for
example, automatically own the stuff
that I own or, you know, um,
I've got to, you know, certain connect
the things that the people I interact
with, my family, my partner, and so on.
I'm I'm gonna somehow be connected to
them in a way in which the clone isn't.
So
because you came slightly first.
Yeah. Because
a clone would argue
that they have
really as much of a connection.
They have all the memories of that
connection. Then in a way you might say
it's kind of unfair to discriminate
against them. But say you've got an
apartment that only one person can live
in or a partner who only one person.
But why should it be with you?
The original.
It's an interesting philosophical
question. But you might say because I
actually have this history.
If I am the same person as the one that
came before and the clone is not, then I
have this history that the clone
doesn't. Of course, there's also the
question,
isn't the clone the same person, too?
This is a question about personal
identity. If I continue and I create a
clone over there, I want to say this one
is me and this one is is someone else.
But you could take the view that a clone
is equally me. Of course, in a movie
like Star Trek where they have a telelet
transporter, it basically creates clones
all the time, they treat the clones as
if they're the original person. Of
course, they destroy the original body
in Star Trek. So, there's only one left
around and only very occasionally do
things go wrong and you get two copies
of Captain Kirk
that somehow our legal system at the
very least is going to have to sort out
some of these issues and that maybe
that's what's moral and what's leg
what's legally acceptable are going to
come apart.
What question would you ask a clone of
yourself?
Is there something useful you can find
out from him about
the fundamentals of consciousness even?
I mean,
kind of in principle, I know that if
it's a perfect clone, it's going to
behave just like me. So, I'm not sure
I'm going to be able to I can discover
whether it's a perfect clone by seeing
whether it answers like me. But
otherwise, I know what I'm going to find
is a being which is just like me, except
that it's just undergone this great
shock of discovering that it's a clone.
So, just so you woke me up tomorrow and
said, "Hey, Dave, sorry to tell you
this, but you're actually the clone."
And you provided me really convincing
evidence, showed me the film of my being
cloned and then all right to here being
here um and and waking up. So, you
proved to me I'm a clone. Well, yeah.
Okay. I would find that shocking. And
who knows how I would react to this. So,
so maybe by talking to the clone, I'd
find something about my own psychology
that I can't find out so easily, like
how I'd react upon discovering that I'm
a clone. I could certainly ask the clone
if it's conscious and what it is
consciousness is like and so on, but I
guess I kind of know if it's a perfect
clone. It's going to behave roughly like
me. Of course, at the beginning, there
will be a question about whether a
perfect clone is possible. So I may want
to ask it lots of questions to see if
its consciousness and the way it talks
about its consciousness and the way it
react to things in general is like me
and you know that will occupy us for a
uh for a long time.
Some basic unit testing on the early
models.
So so if it's a perfect clone you say
that it's going to behave exactly like
you. So that takes us to free will.
Mhm.
So
is there free will? Are we able to make
decisions that are not predetermined
from the initial conditions of the the
universe?
You know, philosophers do this annoying
thing of saying it depends what you
mean. So in this case, you know, yeah,
really depends on what you mean by by
free will. If you mean something which
was not determined in advance, could
never have been determined, then I don't
know. We have free will. I mean, there's
quantum mechanics and who's to say if
that opens up some room, but I'm not
sure we have free will in that sense,
but I'm also not sure that's the kind of
free will that really matters.
Mhm.
You know, um what matters to us is being
able to do what we want and to create
our own futures. We've got this
distinction between having our lives be
under our control and under someone
else's control. And we've got the the
sense of actions that we are responsible
for versus ones that we're not. I think
you can make those distinctions even in
a deterministic
universe. And this is what people call
the compatibilist view of free will
where it's compatible with determinism.
So I think for many purposes the kind of
free will that matters is something we
can have in a deterministic universe.
And I can't see any reason in principle
why an AI system couldn't have free will
of that kind. If you mean super duper
free will, the ability to violate the
laws of physics and doing things that in
principle could not be predicted. I
don't know. Maybe no one has that kind
of free will.
What's the connection between the
the reality of free will and the the
experience of it, the subjective
experience in your view?
So, how does consciousness connect to
this to the experience of uh to the
reality and the experience of free will?
It's certainly true that when we make
decisions and when we choose and so on,
we feel like we have an open future.
Yes.
Feel like, yeah, I could do this. I
could go into philosophy or I could go
into math. I could go to a movie
tonight. I could go to a restaurant. Um,
so we experience these things as if the
future is open. And maybe we experience
ourselves as exerting a kind of
effect on the future that's somehow
picking out one path from many paths
were previously open. And you might
think that actually if we're in a
deterministic universe, there's a sense
in which objectively those paths weren't
really open all along,
but subjectively they were open. And
that's I think that's what really
matters in making a decision. into our
experience of making a decision as
choosing a path for for ourselves. I
mean in general our introspective models
of the mind I think are generally very
distorted representations of the mind.
So it may well be that our experience of
ourel in making a decision. Our
experience of what's going on doesn't
terribly well mirror what's uh what's
going on. And I mean you know maybe
there are anticedants in the brain way
before anything came into consciousness
and and and
so on those aren't represented in our
introspective model. So in general our
experience of our experience of
perception
you know it's like I experience a
perceptual image of the external world.
It's not a terribly good model of what's
actually going on
in the in my visual cortex and so on
which has all these layers and so on.
It's just one little snapshot of of one
bit of that. So in general, you know,
introspective models are very over
oversimplified and it wouldn't be
surprising if that was true of free will
as well. This also incidentally can be
applied to consciousness itself. There
is this very interesting view that
consciousness itself is an introspective
illusion. In fact, we're not conscious,
but we uh but we the brain just has
these introspective models of itself
where it oversimplifies everything and
represents itself as having these
special properties of consciousness.
It's this really simple way to kind of
keep track of itself and so on. And then
on the illusionist view, yeah, that's
just a that's just an illusion. It was I
find this view I find it implausible. I
do find it very attractive in some ways
because you it's easy to tell some story
about how the brain would create
introspective models of its own
consciousness of its own free will as a
way of simplifying itself. I mean it's a
similar way when we perceive the
external world we perceive it as having
these colors that
maybe it doesn't really have course
that's a really useful way of keeping
tracks of keeping track.
Did you say that you find it not very
plausible? because I I I find it both
plausible and attractive in some sense
because I
I mean that's that kind of view is one
that has the minimum amount of mystery
around it.
You can kind of understand that kind of
view. Everything else says we don't
understand so much of this picture.
Yeah. No, it is very it is very
attractive. I recently wrote an article
about this kind of issue called the meta
problem of consciousness. The hard
problem is how does the brain give you
consciousness? The meta problem is why
are we puzzled by the hard problem of
consciousness and cuz you know our being
puzzled by it that's ultimately a bit of
behavior. We might be able to explain
that bit of behavior as one of the easy
problems consciousness. So maybe
there'll be some computational model
that explains why we're puzzled by
consciousness. the meta problem has come
up with that model and I've been
thinking about that a lot lately. There
are some interesting stories you can
tell about why the right kind of
computational system might develop these
introspective models of itself that
attributed itself these special
properties. Um so that that meta problem
is a research program program for
everyone. And then if you've got
attraction to sort of simple views,
desert landscapes and so on,
then you can go all the way with what
people call illusionism and say in fact
consciousness itself is not real. What
is real is just these uh these these
introspective models we have that tell
us that we're conscious. Um so the view
is very simple, very attractive, very
powerful. The trouble is, of course, it
has to say that deep down consciousness
is not real. We're not actually
experiencing right now. And it looks
like it's just contradictory a
fundamental datim of our existence. And
this is why most people find this view
crazy. Just as they find pansychism
crazy in one way, people find
illusionism crazy in another way. But it
I mean
but it so yes it has to deny this
fundamental data of our existence now
and the view that makes the view sort of
frankly unbelievable for most people. On
the other hand the view developed right
might be able to explain why we find it
unbelievable because these models are so
deeply hardwired into our head
and they're all integrated. It's it's
not you can't escape that the the
illusion is a crazy possibility. Is it
possible that the entirety of the
universe, our planet, all the people in
New York, all the organisms on our
planet, the including me here today are
not real in in that sense. They're all
part of an illusion inside of Dave
Charmer's head.
I think all this could be a simulation.
No, but not just a simulation.
Yeah,
because a simulation kind of
is outside of you.
A dream. What if it's all an illusion
that yes, a dream that you're
experiencing that's it's all in your
mind, right? Like is that can you take
illusionism that far?
Well, there's illusionism about the
external world and illusionism about
consciousness and these might gopective
different illusionism about the external
world kind of takes you back to Daycart
and yeah, could all this be produced by
an e evil demon? Decart himself also had
the dream argument. and he said, "How do
you know you're not dreaming right now?
How do you know this is not an amazing
dream?" And I think it's at least a
possibility that yeah, this could be
some super duper complex dream in the
next universe up. I guess though my
attitude is that
just as I mean Deart thought that if the
evil demon was doing it, it's not real.
A lot of people these days say if a
simulation is doing it, it's not real.
As I was saying before, I think even if
it's a simulation, that doesn't stop
this from being real. It just tells us
what the world is made of. Likewise, if
it's a dream, it could turn out that all
this is like my dream created by my
brain and the next universe up. My own
view is that wouldn't stop this physical
world from being real. It would turn out
this cup at the most fundamental level
was made of a bit of say my
consciousness in the dreaming mind at
the next level up. Maybe that would give
you a kind of weird kind of pansychism
about reality, but it wouldn't show that
the cup isn't real. It would just tell
us it's ultimately made of processes in
my dreaming mind. So, I'd resist the
idea that if the physical world is a
dream, then it's an illusion that it's
right. By the way, perhaps you have an
interesting thought about it. Why is the
cards demon or genius considered
evil? Why couldn't it have been a
benevolent one that had the same powers?
Yeah, I mean Dek called it the melanini,
the uh evil genie or evil genius. Malign
I guess was the word. But uh yeah, it's
interesting question. I mean a later
philosophy Barkley
um said no in fact
um all this is done by God.
God actually suppi supplies you all of
these uh all of these perceptions and
ideas and that's how physical reality is
sustained. And interestingly Barclay's
God is doing something that doesn't look
so different from what Decart's evil
demon was doing. It's just that Deart
thought it was deception and Barkley
thought it was not. And I'm I'm actually
more sympathetic to Barkley here. Um,
yeah, this evil demon may be trying to
deceive you, but I think, okay, well,
the evil demon may just be under the uh
working under a false philosophical
theory. It thinks it's deceiving you,
it's wrong. It's like those machines in
the matrix. They thought they were
deceiving you that all this stuff is
real. I think, no, if we're in a matrix,
it's all still uh it's all still real.
Um yeah, the the philosopher OK Busma
had a nice story about this about 50
years ago about Deart's evil demon where
he said this demon spends all it its
time trying to fool people but fails
because somehow all the demon ends up
doing is constructing realities for uh
for people. So yeah, I think that maybe
if it's very natural to take this view
that if we're in a simulation or or evil
demon scenario or something then none of
this is real. But I think it may be
ultimately a philosophical mistake
especially if you take on board sort of
the view of reality where what matters
to reality is really its structure
something like its mathematical
structure and so on which seems to be
the view that a lot of people take from
contemporary physics and it looks like
you can find all that mathematical
structure in a simulation maybe even in
a dream and so on. So as long as that
structure is real I would say that's
enough for the physical world to be
real. Yeah, the physical world may turn
out to be somewhat more intangible than
we had thought and have a surprising
nature, but we're already gotten very
used to that from from modern science.
See, you've you've kind of alluded that
you don't have to have consciousness for
high levels of intelligence, but to
create truly general intelligence
systems, AGI systems at human level
intelligence and perhaps superhuman
level intelligence. you've talked about
that it you feel like that kind of thing
might be very far away but um
nevertheless when we reach that point do
you think consciousness
from an engineering perspective is
needed or at least highly beneficial for
creating an AGI system. Yeah. No one
knows what consciousness is for
functionally. So right now there's no
specific thing we can point to and say
you need consciousness for that.
Mhm.
Still my inclination is to believe that
in principle AGI is possible. At the
very least I don't see why someone
couldn't simulate a brain ultimately
have a computational system that
produces all of our behavior. And if
that's possible, I'm sure vastly many
other computational systems of equal or
greater sophistication
are possible with all of our cognitive
functions and more. And my inclination
is to think that
once you've got all these cognitive
functions, you know, perception,
attention,
reasoning, introspection,
language, emotion,
and so on. It's very likely you'll have
uh you'll have consciousness as well. At
least it's very hard for me to see how
you'd have a system that had all those
things while bypassing somehow
conscious. So just naturally it's
integrated quite naturally. There's a
lot of overlap about the kind of
function that required to achieve each
of those things. That's the so you can't
disentangle them even when you're
at least in us. But we don't know what
the causal role of consciousness in the
physical world what it does. I mean just
say it turns out consciousness does
something very specific in the physical
world like collapsing wave functions
as on one common interpretation of
quantum mechanics. Then ultimately we
might find some place where it actually
makes a difference and we could say ah
here is where in collapsing wave
functions it's driving the behavior of a
system. And maybe it could even turn out
that for uh AGI you'd need something
playing that. I mean, if you wanted to
connect this to free will, some people
think consciousness collapsing wave
functions. That would be how the
conscious mind exerts effects on the
physical world and exerts its free will.
And maybe it could turn out that any AGI
that didn't utilize that mechanism would
be limited in the kinds of functionality
that it had. I don't myself find that
plausible. I think probably that
functionality could be simulated. But
you could imagine once we had a very
specific idea about the role of
consciousness in the physical world,
this would have some impact on the
capacity of AGIS. And if it was a role
that could not be duplicated elsewhere,
then we'd have to find a we we'd have to
find some way to either
get consciousness in the system to play
that role or to simulate it. If we can
isolate a particular road to
consciousness, of course, that's
incredibly
uh seems like an incredibly difficult
thing.
Do you have uh worries about existential
threats of
conscious intelligent beings that are
not us?
So certainly, I'm sure you're worried
about us.
Yeah. from an existential threat
perspective, but outside of us AI
systems, there's a couple of different
kinds of existential threats here. One
is an existential threat to
consciousness generally. I mean, yes, I
care about humans and the survival of
humans and so on, but just say it turns
out that that eventually we're replaced
by some artificial beings that aren't
humans, but are somehow our successors.
They still have good lives. they still
do interesting and wonderful things with
the universe. I don't think that's
that's not so bad. Um that's just our
successors. We were one stage in
evolution. Something different, maybe
better came next. If on the other hand,
all of consciousness was wiped out, that
would be a very serious moral disaster.
One way that could happen is by all
intelligent life being uh wiped out. And
many people think that yeah, once you
get to humans and AI and amazing
sophistication where everyone has got
the the ability to create weapons that
can destroy the whole universe just by
just by pressing a button, then maybe
it's inevitable all intelligent life
will uh will die out. That would be a
that would certainly be a disaster and
we've got to think very hard about how
to avoid that. But yeah, another
interesting kind of disaster is that
maybe intelligent life is not wiped out
but all consciousness is wiped out. So
just say you thought unlike what I was
saying a moment ago that there are two
different kinds of intelligent systems
some which are conscious and some which
are some which are not and just say it
turns out that we create AGI with a with
high degree of intelligence meaning high
degree of sophistication and its
behavior but with no consciousness at
all. That AGI could take over the world
maybe but then there'd be but let's
there'd be no consciousness in this
world. This would be a world of zombies.
Some people have called this the zombie
apocalypse
because it's an apocalypse of
consciousness. Consciousness is gone.
You've merely got this super intelligent
non-concious robots. And I would say
that's a moral disaster in the same way
in almost the same way that the world
with no intelligent life is a moral
disaster. All value and meaning may be
gone from uh from that world. So these
are both threats to watch out for. Now
my own view is if you get super
intelligence you're almost certainly
going to bring consciousness with it. So
I hope that's not going to happen. But
of course I don't understand
consciousness. No one understands
consciousness. This is one reason for
this is one reason at least among many
for thinking very seriously about
consciousness and thinking about the
kind of future we want to create with uh
in a in a world with humans andor AIs.
How do you feel about the possibility if
consciousness so naturally does come
with the AGI systems that we are just a
step in the evolution that we will be
just something a blimp on the record
that'll be studied in books by the AGI
systems centuries from now?
I mean I think I'd probably be okay with
that especially if somehow humans are
continuous with AGIS. I mean I think
something like this is inevitable. At
the very least, humans are going to be
transformed. We're going to be augmented
by technology that's already happening
in all kinds of ways. We're going to be
transformed by technology where our
brains are going to be uploaded and
computationally enhanced. And eventually
that line between what's a human and
what's a what's an AI may be kind of
hard to hard to draw. How much does it
matter, for example, that some future
being a thousand years from now that
somehow descended from us actually still
has biology? I think it would be nice if
you can kind of point to its cognitive
system, point to some parts that had
some roots in us and chase a trace a
continuous line there. That would be
selfishly nice for me to think that
okay, I'm connected to this thread line
through the future of the world. But
even if it turns out, okay, there's a
jump there. They they found a better way
to design cognitive systems. They
designed a wholly new kind of thing and
the only line is some causal chain of
designing and systems that design better
systems. Is that so much worse? I don't
know. We're still at least part of a
causal chain of uh of design. And yes,
they're not humans, but still they're
our successes. So, I mean, ultimately, I
think it's probably inevitable that
something like that will happen. And at
least we were at least we were part of
the process. It' be nice if they still
cared enough about us to um you know
maybe to engage with our arguments and
maybe I'm really hoping that the AGIS
are going to solve all the problems of
philosophy. They'll come back and read
all this all this crappy work from the
20th and 21st century hard problem of
consciousness and here is why they got
it wrong and so on. If that happened
then I'd really feel like I was part of
at least a intellectual process over
centuries and that would be kind of
cool. I'm pretty sure they would clone
or they would recreate David Chmer's and
and for the fun of it sort of bring back
um other philosophers.
Yeah, bring back Deart and just put them
in a room and just watch. It'll be a a
Netflix of the future show where you
bring philosophers from different human
100% human philosophers from previous
generations, put them in a room and see
them.
I am totally I am totally up for that.
simulators, AGIs of the future. If
you're watching this podcast,
do that.
I would like to be recreated and hang
out with
Deart with Deart would be the first who
if you if you could hang out as part of
such a TV show with a philosopher that's
no longer with us from long ago. Who
would it who would you choose?
Well, Deart would have to be right up
there. Oh, actually a couple of months
ago, I got to have a conversation with
Decart. an actor who's actually a
philosopher came out on stage playing
day. I didn't know this was gonna happen
and just after I gave a talk and
a bit of
talking about how my ideas were crap and
all derived from him and so on. We had a
long we had a long argument. This was
great. I would love to see what Dick
Hart would think about AI, for example,
and the modern neuroscience and so on. I
suspect not too much would surprise him,
but
but um yeah, William James
um you know, for a psychologist of
consciousness, I think James was
probably the uh was probably the uh the
richest, but um or there are Emanuel K.
You know, I never really understood what
he was up to if I got to actually uh
talk to him about some of this. Hey,
there it was Princess Elizabeth who
talked with Decart and who really uh you
know got at the problems of how Decart's
ideas of a non-physical mind interacting
with the uh with the uh the physical
body couldn't really work. She's been
kind of most philosophers think she's
been proved right. So maybe put me in a
room with
Deart and Princess Elizabeth and we can
all argue it out.
Uh
what kind of future? So we talked about
uh with zombies a concerning future but
what kind of future excites you? What do
you think if we look forward sort of
we're at the very early stages of
understanding consciousness and we're
now at the early stages of being able to
engineer
complex interesting systems that have
degrees of intelligence and maybe one
day we'll have degrees of consciousness
maybe be able to upload brains all those
possibilities virtual reality what is
there a particular aspect of this future
world that just excites you I think
there are lots of different aspects. I
mean, frankly, I wanted to hurry up and
have like, yeah, we've had some progress
lately in AI and VR, but in the grand
scheme of things, it's still kind of
slow. The changes are not yet
transformative. And, you know, I'm in my
50s. I've only got so long left. So, I'd
like I'd like to see really serious AI
in my lifetime and really serious
virtual worlds cuz yeah, once people I
would like to be able to hang out in a
virtual reality which is richer than uh
than uh than this reality to really get
to inhabit fundamentally different kinds
of spaces. Well, I would very much like
to be able to upload my mind onto a uh
onto a computer. So, um maybe I don't
have to die. Um if this is maybe
gradually replace my neurons with uh
silicon chips that inhabit a computer
selfishly, that would be uh that would
be wonderful. I suspect I'm not going to
quite get there in uh in my lifetime.
But once that's possible, then you've
got the possibility of transforming your
consciousness in remarkable ways,
augmenting it, enhancing it. So let me
ask then if such a system is a
possibility within your lifetime
and you were given the opportunity to
become immortal
in this kind of way.
Would you choose to be immortal?
Yes, I totally would. I know some people
say uh they couldn't it would be awful
to be uh to be immortal. It would be so
boring or something. I don't see I
really don't see uh I don't see why this
might be I mean even if it's just
ordinary life that continues ordinary
life is not so bad but furthermore I
kind of suspect that you know if the
universe is going to go on forever or
indefinitely it's going to continue to
be interesting I don't think you know
your view was that we just hit this one
romantic point of interest now and
afterwards it's all going to be boring
super intelligent stasis I guess my
vision is more like no it's going to
continue to be infinitely interesting
something like as you go up the set
theoretic hierarchy you know you go from
the uh the finite card finite cardinals
to alf zero and then uh through there to
all the alf and alf two and maybe the
the continuum and you keep taking power
sets and you know in set theory they've
got these results that actually all this
is fundamentally unpredictable it
doesn't follow any simple computational
patterns there's new levels of
creativity as the set threatic universe
expands and expands. I guess that's my
future. That's my vision of the future
of that's my optimistic vision of the
future of super intelligence. It will
keep expanding and keep growing but
still being fundamentally unpredictable
at many points. I mean yes this gets
creates all kinds of worries like
couldn't it all be fragile and be
destroyed at any point? So we're going
to need a solution to that problem. If
we get to stipulate that I'm immortal,
well, I hope that I'm not just immortal
and stuck in the single world forever,
but I'm immortal and get to take part in
this process of going through infinitely
rich created futures.
Rich, unpredictable, exciting. Well, I
think I speak for a lot of people in
saying I hope you do become immortal and
there'll be that Netflix show of the
future where you get to argue with
Decart
perhaps for all eternity. So Dave, it
was an honor. Thank you so much for
talking today.
Thanks. It was a pleasure.
Thanks for listening to this
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leave you with some words from David
Chmer's. Materialism is a beautiful and
compelling view of the world, but to
account for consciousness, we have to go
beyond the resources it provides.
Thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time.