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Is consciousness an illusion? 5 experts explain — Transcript

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0:08- In those quiet moments
0:09when we find ourselves wrestling with trying to understand
0:12the nature of our existence, it's only natural
0:14to turn to the observable world for answers.
0:17We look out at the cosmos to try
0:19and decipher how the Universe came to be
0:21or we consider the rules that govern
0:23the smallest particles of matter-
0:26all of the stuff that makes up you
0:28and me and everything else.
0:30But there's something else
0:31that's fundamental to our existence.
0:33The thing that makes us, us.
0:37That, in a word, is consciousness.
0:40But what exactly is consciousness?
0:47- It seems to me that so many
0:48of the conversations about consciousness
0:51and existence can be incredibly esoteric,
0:54but you are a person who's actually
0:56doing scientific investigation
0:59into questions of consciousness.
1:03How do you make it coherent
1:05and make it something that you can, actually,
1:07wrap your hand around when it seems so huge?
1:13- How did that feel?
1:14- It felt like something, the quality of a handshake.
1:17- That's what conscious is-it's not esoteric.
1:19It's the most basic thing there is.
1:20- Okay.
1:21- When somebody steps on your toe
1:22or I'm thinking whether I should step on your toe
1:24to make the point, it hurts.
1:27- Yeah. - That's what
1:28conscious is-
1:29it's as basic as that.
1:29It's what you see. It's what you hear.
1:31It's the pains you have.
1:32It's the love you have.
1:33The fear, the passion, that's all consciousness.
1:35- So it's experience and awareness.
1:38- It's really the same,
1:39with different names for experience,
1:40awareness, subjectivity, phenomenology,
1:43qualia, these all different words
1:45that philosophers, other people have invented.
1:47It is the experience of anything.
1:50If I'm dead, if I'm deeply anesthetized
1:54or I'm in a deep sleep, there is no one there.
1:56There's no one home,
1:57there's no experiences.
1:59So that's the difference.
2:00It's a central aspect of my life that I feel.
2:03You know it's the most famous deduction in Western thought,
2:06'cogito, ergo sum,' literally means
2:08"I'm conscious, therefore, I know I am."
2:09The only way I know I exist, because I'm conscious.
2:13Remember Neo in "The Matrix"? - Um-hm.
2:15- You know at one point
2:17he wakes up to the true world
2:19or the world of the machine,
2:20but he never has any doubt that he exists.
2:22Why? Because he experiences things.
2:27- Humanity has made tremendous progress
2:28in our understanding of the world-
2:31and yet, there remains no widely accepted
2:33explanation of what consciousness is.
2:36It's still this tantalizing mystery
2:39for scientists and philosophers alike.
2:43This is, as the philosopher David Chalmers coined it,
2:46"The hard problem of consciousness."
2:53In this episode we'll visit neuroscientists,
2:56spiritual leaders, entrepreneurs, AI experts
3:01and even a Nobel laureate as we try to unpack
3:04the mystery of consciousness
3:06and continue humanity's eternal search
3:08for meaning and purpose in our vast,
3:10miraculously complicated, rapidly expanding
3:13and incomparably mysterious cosmos.
3:17This is "Dispatches from The Well".
3:31"I think therefore, I am."
3:33This was the fundamental thing
3:35that philosopher and scientist, Rene Descartes,
3:37believed he could say about the world.
3:39I think, therefore, I am.
3:43No matter what anyone might do or say
3:46that fundamental truth appears to be inviolable.
3:49Ultimately, I am something.
3:51Bye.
3:52There is an experience of being me
3:55and there is presumably an experience of being you.
4:00So as we seek to understand the Universe
4:02in which we all live, all of our inquiries have to start
4:06from this same subjective standpoint, the self.
4:12So we're here in New York at the New York
4:14Academy of Sciences' Consciousness Conference,
4:17and I am certainly someone who has thought a lot
4:20about the hard problem of consciousness,
4:23how it emerges and what the hell it even is
4:26and how to talk about it in a thoughtful way.
4:29There is the question of existence
4:32and directly related to that
4:34is this question of our experience of existence.
4:38I'm not sure if those are two separate questions
4:40or one question, but taken all together,
4:44it's certainly something that feels really profound.
4:47In fact, it feels, which is kind of the whole nut.
4:53The feeling of life itself.
4:56This is how Christof Koch describes consciousness.
4:59It's also the title of his most recent book on the subject
5:02in which he argues that consciousness
5:04is likely more widespread than previously assumed.
5:08For more than 30 years,
5:09Christof has been working to better understand how the brain
5:12generates subjective experience and self-awareness.
5:16So who better to help us understand
5:17the contours of this debate
5:19and help define some of the key terms?
5:22- If you go to grad school,
5:23they tell you physics is fundamental studies,
5:25everything there is.
5:26And you learn about relativity theory
5:29and you learn about quantum mechanics and electrodynamics,
5:33but nowhere is there anything about consciousness.
5:35But here I am, I'm conscious,
5:37so how do I go from these wonderful theories,
5:41but they don't have anything about conscious in them
5:43to a conscious being-
5:45that's the mystery.
5:47- What is that lack of interest
5:50in the question of consciousness?
5:51Is it a lack of interest that that informs that?
5:54- No, I think many scientists would say,
5:58"I don't doubt that I'm conscious,
6:00but I don't know how to study it empirically.
6:02It's something we should leave with the philosophers."
6:05But I always felt that's a cop-out,
6:07because if science claims to understand everything,
6:10how can it not describe the central fact of my existence?
6:12- Right. - That I'm conscious
6:13and that you're also conscious,
6:15so it has to account for it.
6:16- The principle instrument that we're using
6:18alongside any other tools-
6:20- Yes, yes. - To try and comprehend.
6:21- Yes, without conscious there's nothing.
6:23Without conscience, I can't even look at any meter.
6:26I can't do science. I can't do anything.
6:27So I have to understand the tools
6:29that I use to understand the world.
6:31- How did you become interested in these kinds of questions?
6:36- I had a really bad toothache.
6:38- Okay.
6:39- Why does it hurt? Why does it hurt?
6:42Well the conventional explanation,
6:44which is true as far as it goes,
6:46you know your tooth is inflamed,
6:48sends electrical energy down your trigeminal nerve
6:51that goes inside the spinal cord
6:52is switched to a double relay all the way up to cortex.
6:56And now in your brain proper,
6:57you have some neurons that fire.
6:59What does that mean?
7:00Well, that means
7:01some potassium-chloride ions sloshing on.
7:02So what? Well, I mean, why does it hurt?
7:05There are ions sloshing on my liver
7:07and I have no conscious awareness or my heart.
7:10Hell, there's stuff occurring all the time in my body,
7:12but I don't feel it.
7:13But somehow here it feels.
7:16So there's this explanatory gap,
7:18this is what philosophers call them.
7:19On the one hand you have physics, you have the brain,
7:22or heart and other organs,
7:24and the other hand you have conscious experience
7:27and it's very unclear how do you get from one to the other.
7:30Okay, this is the beating heart of the mind-body problem.
7:34And I was a physicist and a budding neuroscientist,
7:36so I said,
7:37"Hell, neuroscience should be able to address this, right.
7:39'Cause after all,
7:40it's not the heart that gives rise to pain it's the brain.
7:44So I'm a brain scientist, so we should be able
7:46to use modern, scientific techniques to understand
7:49the link between the brain and consciousness."
7:54At the time I was working with Francis Crick,
7:56the Nobel laureate who discovered
7:57the double helical structure of DNA.
8:00And he and I then popularized
8:01this notion of the neuronal footprint of consciousness
8:04called the NCC, the Neuronal Correlates of Consciousness,
8:08using scientific tools to track
8:10where are the footprints in your brain?
8:12Are they all over the brain
8:13or are they just in a particular part of the brain?
8:15Are they in your spinal cord? When do we first see them?
8:18- According to this theory,
8:19there are specific mechanisms
8:21in the brain that are necessary
8:22and sufficient for a conscious experience to occur.
8:26If this could be sufficiently measured,
8:28scientists might at least be able to identify
8:30where consciousness occurs in the brain,
8:32even if we couldn't explain how.
8:35In spite of more than three decades of study
8:37since Koch and Crick put forth this theory
8:40it remains just that, a theory.
8:44Is consciousness simply an attribute of the material world?
8:47Or does it exist somewhere else on some other plane?
8:51Do we have any way of knowing?
8:53- I would say the shoe's on the other foot.
8:57Essentially, philosophy of minds organize around two poles:
9:00the physical and the mental.
9:02Materialism says, "All there is, is matter
9:04and consciousness is, you're really confused about it.
9:06It doesn't really exist."
9:08That's what a modern analytical philosopher would say.
9:10An idealist would say,
9:11"Well, the only thing that really exists is mental
9:14and this entire world, ultimately,
9:16is a manifestation of the mental."
9:18And there's some people who say,
9:19"Well, both exist simultaneously
9:21and it's like the inside and the outside."
9:23From the outside, there's this physical thing:
9:26You, including your brain.
9:27But then from the inside you feel.
9:29That's exactly the way this physical system
9:32feels from the inside.
9:33So both exist simultaneously, which is known as panpsychism.
9:38- Panpsychism suggests that consciousness,
9:40the subjective experience of being aware,
9:43isn't just something that humans and some animals have.
9:46Instead, the theory goes, consciousness may be
9:49an inherent characteristic of all matter.
9:53Imagine every tiny thing in the Universe
9:55has some tiny bit of consciousness.
9:58Whether you buy it or not, it's an intriguing theory.
10:02So what's the difference between dualism and panpsychism?
10:06- So dualism says there are really two different domains.
10:10This is the way I grew up.
10:11I grew up as a Catholic and so they teach you,
10:15'Okay, there's your brain and then there is the real you.
10:19This is like the spirit floating above the water
10:22and that's a soul.
10:23And the soul makes you do thing,
10:24you know the soul ultimately decides like a free will
10:27and of course once you die,
10:29the soul sort of gets disconnected from the body
10:32and maybe gets resurrected at the end of time
10:34to live in the eschaton and all of that.'
10:37But then the problem has always been
10:41what's the connection between the brain, the physical
10:44and the mental, the soul?
10:45Because if the soul is really spooky stuff,
10:48how does the soul make my brain do things?
10:51And so there's no evidence for such a soul,
10:55you know because it has to exchange energy.
10:57We've never measured any such a soul.
10:59So we got rid of it.
11:00Panpsychism is different.
11:02Panpsychism really says, "Fundamentally,
11:04everything in the universe has two aspects:
11:06has an inner aspect and has an outer aspect."
11:09It's not something in additional you have to presuppose,
11:11but it comes inherent with object, with things.
11:15Complex things have complex minds associated with it.
11:18Simple things like maybe a fly or Protozoa
11:21have very, very, very simple minds associated with them.
11:25- So there are degrees of consciousness?
11:27- Yes. - And we can imagine
11:28this consciousness evolving in different ways.
11:30- That's correct.
11:31So we have a lot of it but,
11:33of course, there could be creatures who have more.
11:34And as a baby with little of it,
11:37and a dog has has less of it.
11:38Like my dog doesn't know about the weekend,
11:41but my dog is clearly conscious.
11:43You know it can have pain and pleasure
11:44and it can be happy and sad.
11:46And mice, presumably, have less
11:47and bees, presumably, have less and somewhere down there
11:50becomes so dim at the root of life.
11:52You know does a fly really have consciousness?
11:55Right now, it's very difficult to address experimentally.
11:58But it may well feel like something to be a bee,
12:00to be alive, to have just drank some golden nectar.
12:15- Over on the other side of Central Park
12:16is an unassuming townhouse
12:18wherein the Vedanta Society of New York is housed.
12:21Hey.
12:22- Namaste, namaste. - Namaste.
12:23- And good morning. - Pleasure to meet you.
12:24It's a place where consciousness
12:26has been a topic for more than 100 years.
12:29Swami Sarvapriyananda, a Hindu monk,
12:32is its minister and spiritual leader.
12:36You're in a profession that is, by definition almost,
12:41interested in these questions on the perimeter
12:44of what we can know for certain.
12:46- Yes.
12:48- That traffics in things that all of us,
12:51I think, wrestle with to different degrees:
12:54Who am I? Why am I here?
12:56What am I supposed to do?
12:58- I think human beings, wherever they are
13:02and whichever time we live,
13:04we have always been fascinated by these big questions.
13:06As you said, who am I really?
13:09What am I doing here?
13:10What's the point of all of this and what's our destiny?
13:14And what is this?
13:15- How do you define consciousness?
13:20- That's a great question and, I would say,
13:22the central theme in what we teach
13:26in the philosophy of Vedanta is consciousness.
13:28- Hmm.
13:29- The reason Vedanta and other Indian philosophies,
13:34in general, have been interest in consciousness
13:36is the common project in ancient India
13:39was how to go beyond suffering.
13:41How to attain fulfillment in human life
13:45and that concerns the human self.
13:46And when you come to the human self, us, I,
13:50the first thing that strikes you
13:51is that central to ourselves is consciousness.
13:54And so they became very interested
13:56in what this consciousness was.
13:58The way we look at consciousness is from the inside out.
14:03If you ask Christof Koch or some of the brain scientists,
14:06they try to look at it from outside in.
14:09You know they'll study the brain
14:11and then electrical activity in the brain
14:13and try to understand what consciousness is.
14:15What we do is we look at our own experience.
14:19I mean the evidence of consciousness
14:21is available to all of us.
14:25That's the first experience that we have in all our lives.
14:28We're first aware and then aware of something else.
14:36Consciousness itself does not need evidence
14:39'cause it's self-evident.
14:40It's what in Vedanta we call 'self-luminous.'
14:43Light is a good example.
14:46In a dark room, when you switch on a light
14:47everything in that room, people and tables and chairs,
14:50they're all revealed by that light.
14:52You don't need another light to see that light.
14:54Consciousness is the light of lights,
14:57in Sanskrit (speaking in foreign language).
15:00By its light, everything here is lit up.
15:03When we are seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching,
15:06thinking, speaking, doing things,
15:08all the time one common thread
15:10all throughout is that we're conscious.
15:13These are all activities, experiences in consciousness.
15:17And if you define life as a series of experiences,
15:19then what we would say is that an experience
15:22is consciousness plus an object.
15:24You are aware and then you're aware of something.
15:27- Right. - And the things
15:29that we're aware of, they keep changing.
15:30So we have a series of experiences.
15:32And consciousness plus object one is one experience.
15:35Consciousness plus object two
15:36is another experience and so on.
15:37And the consciousness is constant.
15:40In Western thought the one who came closest to this,
15:44I would say, was the philosopher, mathematician, scientist,
15:47Descartes, who about 300 years ago, set out to find out
15:53an absolute certain basis for knowledge.
15:56And he questioned whatever could be questioned, doubted,
15:59you could doubt, but he found that your own existence
16:02can't be doubted.
16:04"I think, therefore I exist."
16:06Vedanta would say that, exactly,
16:08but you need to go one step further.
16:11Even when I don't think,
16:13I'm still aware of not thinking.
16:14- Hmm. - So-
16:16- Yeah, that's a-
16:17- Consciousness is primary.
16:20Either thinking or not thinking, seeing.
16:21I think that's what Descartes was probably driving at.
16:24In Descartes "Meditations",
16:26there's a very poignant place where he says,
16:30"How strange it is that whatever I know in this world,
16:35I can doubt it.
16:36I'm not sure of it.
16:38We can doubt any of this exists."
16:39It could be in the Matrix, you could be dreaming.
16:42But what I'm absolutely sure of my own existence,
16:45I don't know anything about it, that consciousness.
16:49- Do you think anything about
16:50the different approaches to understanding the world
16:53and understanding consciousness,
16:54say the spiritual and the materialist approaches,
16:57that they necessarily lead to different conclusions
17:00about meaning and purpose?
17:03- I am a conscious being, first and foremost.
17:05Before even I am a body or a human being,
17:09I'm a conscious being first.
17:11And if that consciousness itself is denied,
17:16as an illusion or as nothing but activities in matter,
17:20in your living in the brain,
17:23in that case, the things which consciousness uniquely does,
17:26like meaning and purpose, they will also be denied.
17:29They will also be reduced to either matter
17:31or be dismissed as an illusion.
17:33You'll inevitably have a worldview
17:36which is devoid of meaning, of purpose.
17:40So now we have this
17:41profoundly disconnected culture in the world today.
17:46There is science, hardcore science,
17:50and which claims absolute possession of truth.
17:55And there is religion, humanities,
17:59all of which science would say is sort of derivative.
18:02You know that reality is matter, space, time, energy
18:07and from that life has evolved.
18:09And then life sort of comes up
18:10with these little illusions of purpose, meaning,
18:15value, beauty, goodness.
18:18I think one interesting place is this,
18:21where right now with ChatGPT and everything with the AI,
18:26notice something very interesting is happening.
18:29Whatever we human beings are capable of
18:31and we thought our highest capacities are like intelligence,
18:35like memory or like creativity, like decision-making.
18:38Now these machines, AI-powered machines
18:40are capable of doing all of that except one thing
18:44and that one thing is they're not conscious.
18:47And if you say that, all right, make the machines conscious,
18:50they wouldn't know where to begin.
18:52That's why they're asking what is consciousness
18:54and how can you know artificial programs,
18:58machines become conscious.
18:59That's a huge issue.
19:02- So some people say, "Well, I was typing with the chatbot
19:06and I asked if it was conscious-
19:07- Yes. - And it said
19:08it was conscious.
19:09So therefore it's conscious."
19:10- Right.
19:11- And you're like, "Okay by the way,
19:13here I am, I sit here as a human being in front of you,
19:15I tell you I am God."
19:18Okay? Right?
19:19I mean like that doesn't,
19:21you know there's more to it then a reply like that.
19:25- There's some competing claims.
19:27- Yes. - We'll have to sort that out.
19:28- Yes.
19:29- Reid Hoffman is one of the world's best known
19:31tech entrepreneurs and investors.
19:33Perhaps best known for his role
19:34in helping to co-found LinkedIn,
19:36he's also an accomplished writer
19:38and a student of philosophy.
19:40Reid was an early investor and advisor to OpenAI,
19:43the startup responsible for creating what is likely
19:45the best known artificial intelligence tool in the world,
19:49ChatGPT.
19:51ChatGPT is a large language model
19:53that answers questions put to it in natural language.
19:56For example, what are the challenges
19:58in trying to understand the nature of consciousness?
20:01Reid explored the ins and outs of this emerging technology
20:04by actually co-authoring his most recent book,
20:06"Impromptu" with GPT-4.
20:09We wanted to talk to Reid about how artificial intelligence
20:11could help us better understand human intelligence
20:14and what it means to be conscious.
20:17When was the first time you remember
20:21thinking about artificial intelligence?
20:23- Well my undergraduate major, Symbolic Systems,
20:26is basically artificial intelligence and cognitive science.
20:29So I was interested in how we think, how we speak,
20:32how we understand ourselves, how we understand each other
20:35and how we do that both individually and collaboratively.
20:38And Stanford had a great artificial intelligence department,
20:41and part of why it ended up being computation
20:44and cognition was my specific suggestion was kind of like,
20:48"Okay, these cognition capabilities by these machines
20:54help us understand our own, help us amplify our own,
20:58might even create something really amazing
21:00and understand what intelligence is
21:01'cause we are very anthropocentric.
21:03So it's like, well, thinking is what humans do."
21:05- Yeah.
21:06- And you're like,
21:06"Well, we certainly are a very good example
21:08of thinking beings and creatures.
21:10But think about all the other thinking creatures."
21:12Like we generally are very negative
21:15on how other animals think.
21:18And like they think a lot more than we think they do.
21:20I mean they pair bond, they mate for life.
21:24They coordinate in packs and groups.
21:26I mean there's all kinds of things.
21:28And we say, "Well, they don't really think
21:29the way we think."
21:30Well of course they don't think the way we think,
21:31but they do think, right?
21:34Well, now we also have another pattern of thinking.
21:36How do these machines think?
21:38'Cause, by the way, they are thinking today too.
21:41They're not thinking the way we are.
21:43They may not be thinking at our level of capability
21:45in some regard, but it's a pattern of thought, right?
21:48And so you think about, okay, how do we understand
21:51all of these different patterns of thought
21:52and where are they similar and where are they different?
21:57- Okay, Descartes is, "I think, therefore I am."
22:00- Yes. - Right,
22:02and in general with respect to philosophy,
22:04there's no uniformity of agreement that I can really know
22:09that you are having a conscious experience
22:11in the same way that I am having a conscious experience.
22:14Is that true or no
22:16or do you disagree? - Well, it's complicated.
22:18- Okay.
22:20- So part of what I think Wittgenstein
22:22and other philosophers did in upgrading Descartes,
22:27to put it in fairly simple terms:
22:28So he says, "I think, therefore I am,"
22:30because I go through this doubt
22:31and I realize that I must exist
22:32in order to doubt that I'm existing.
22:34So okay I'm formulating a thought about like,
22:36I think therefore I exist.
22:38How do I formulate that thought?
22:39How does it have any coherence?
22:41How is it communicable to myself or to you?
22:47And when you begin analyzing language,
22:49you begin to realize that in the pattern of it
22:51there may be some kind of, as it were,
22:54transcendental observations about the nature of reality
22:58that come about if you believe-
23:00- Uh-huh, I think I understand what you just said,
23:02but you may need to explain that in more detail.
23:05But go ahead.
23:05- Yes, if you believe that we are actually succeeding
23:09in communicating at all versus making random noises.
23:12- Okay.
23:13- So then you begin to go to, okay, what do words mean
23:15and how do we apply a word like conscious?
23:18And I say, "I am conscious and you're conscious"
23:20and we learn the Wittgenstein phrases,
23:23we're a form of life and we play a language game.
23:26And Wittgenstein's argument would be
23:29because of the way the word consciousness works
23:32in our form of language we do actually,
23:35in fact, share some experience that is objective
23:40and shared even though it is
23:41each of our subjective consciousnesses.
23:43- Okay. - Now, that doesn't mean
23:44that that our consciousness are exactly the same.
23:46Like where I smell something different when I smell apricot
23:50and you smell something else- - Right, right, right.
23:50- When you smell apricot-
23:53- The quality of- - Yes, the quality of it.
23:54Maybe there's something that is diverse
23:56and subjective in it,
23:58but we learn in our use of language
24:00the pattern by which we go, "Oh, I smell apricot,"
24:03and we synchronize in our language dances
24:05with each other what that is.
24:07And so we have some level of quality
24:08of shared experience in what that is.
24:12And so there is, in forms of life,
24:16a presumption that successful language use
24:20does lead to some observations about the way the world is,
24:25not just by science, but by our ability to communicate
24:29to each other about the worlds
24:30that we are mutually living in.
24:32- Okay, so I'm persuaded
24:33that you are also conscious then.
24:35- Yes.
24:36- But we are living in a moment, where fairly recently,
24:39there's been this thunder clap of excitement
24:42and energy with and around AI with ChatGPT
24:47and all of these large language models.
24:49And it's remarkable
24:52how quickly the developments are happening.
24:55And I understand why people would say things like,
24:58"It's not conscious."
24:59But it seems to me that there's something
25:02about the way these mechanisms, which are being built
25:04and which we largely understand what's happening,
25:07how they seem to do things in a way
25:10that's kind of mechanistic.
25:12But I suppose we do things in a way that's mechanistic,
25:15but we also have a conscious experience.
25:18And how will we know if the machines
25:21are having some sort of conscious experience,
25:23in addition, to the mechanistic thing that's happening?
25:27Is it preposterous to think that, that might be going on?
25:29- It's certainly not preposterous,
25:32although it's preposterous the way that some people say it.
25:35'Cause I think right now the machines are much closer
25:36to tools than they are to creatures.
25:39Because part of how we make judgements
25:41and consciousness is like one of us
25:44will say something to each other that we'll go,
25:47"Oh that is, actually, you've shown me something
25:49about the experience of that."
25:51Or I see your response in kind of in delight
25:55or in pain with this
25:57and then I see a reflection of that in how I would do it.
26:00And so that's part of how we do these things
26:02and the devices aren't there right now.
26:05There's nothing that says
26:06the devices couldn't get there in some version.
26:09- Right. - And part of the amazement
26:11of that is, well, how do we learn better
26:14about ourselves in that, too.
26:16Like for example even playing with GPT-4,
26:19which I've been playing with since last August,
26:22when I go, "Wow, this thing can do a number of things
26:25better than 99% of human beings."
26:28All right, what's the role of specialness?
26:30Like what are the things that we still do
26:32that we are so much better than this at?
26:34And so then how do we still use this as an amplifier?
26:37I think is one of the great questions
26:40about how do we come to understand other presences,
26:46cognitive entities in ourselves
26:48and how do we have a elevated existence by partnering,
26:54dancing together, etc.
27:03- I don't think consciousness is all or nothing.
27:04It's clearly a continuum
27:06and it's a continuum within an individual.
27:08You know I'm more conscious when I'm awake.
27:11And within a collection of species;
27:14you know I think certain species
27:16are more conscious than other species
27:18and I think it's true with machines as well.
27:20You know maybe, I don't think that we have any machines
27:23that are conscious in any interesting sense yet.
27:27But I think if we ever do, they'll be part of that spectrum.
27:32- Melanie Mitchell is
27:33a professor at the Santa Fe Institute
27:34who studied artificial intelligence for decades.
27:37- Technical thing I'm gonna say tonight.
27:38- She's also the author of "Artificial Intelligence:
27:41A Guide for Thinking Humans".
27:43- I've been interested in science
27:46my whole life, essentially.
27:48But I got really interested in the topic of intelligence
27:52when I read Doug Hofstadter's book, "Godel, Escher, Bach",
27:55way back when I graduated from college.
27:57It was about how intelligence can emerge
28:02from this giant collection of non-intelligent things
28:05like cells in the body, neurons and their connections.
28:10So a neuron isn't intelligent,
28:11I think most people would agree to that.
28:13But when you put a huge collection of them together
28:15and they interact in certain ways.
28:17What we call intelligence emerges along with
28:19a lot of other kind of mental cognitive qualities,
28:23like emotions, self-awareness
28:26and other things of that nature.
28:28So that was incredibly fascinating to me.
28:31And I kind of got into AI
28:33because I went to work with Hofstadter
28:35and that's what he was working on.
28:36I mean it was sort of a mix of cognitive science and AI,
28:39'cause we were interested
28:40in understanding human intelligence
28:42by trying to develop intelligence in machines.
28:50All this AI controversy about consciousness
28:53has kind of brought it into
28:54the limelight of the broader public
28:57thinking about like what is consciousness?
29:00What is this thing we call self-awareness?
29:03How is that different from things that are not self-aware?
29:07You know things that people don't usually talk about.
29:08But you know we have these systems now
29:11that talk to us in natural language
29:14and they seem like they're self-aware.
29:17We know that they probably aren't, almost certainly aren't.
29:20But how would we tell?
29:22What kind of tests would we give?
29:24And then we start realizing that these questions
29:28don't just apply to like AI;
29:30they apply to things like when is an infant self-aware?
29:33- Sure. - It used to be,
29:35you know maybe 30, 40 years ago,
29:37people used to think that infants didn't feel pain.
29:40- Hmm. - And they would do surgeries
29:42on newborn babies without anesthesia.
29:45You know it seems crazy now.
29:47You know our understanding
29:48of how consciousness develops, it's increasing.
29:57Often, a lot of people don't think animals
29:59have consciousness and that, therefore,
30:02it's fine to use them as farm laborers
30:05and to eat them and all that kind of thing.
30:08But we really have very little understanding
30:10of these questions about consciousness.
30:13So I think AI has helped us to really see
30:18that this is an important question,
30:21not just for philosophy, but for real life.
30:23- Yeah. - And for
30:25making moral decisions.
30:29- Good morning to you.
30:32- And good afternoon to you, sir.
30:35- Whatever we have in our heads
30:38which enables us to understand things
30:41is not something you can put on a computer.
30:43It's very relevant, of course,
30:45to what people say now about AI.
30:47You see they seem to say, "Oh well,
30:49these AI systems they're so clever,
30:52so smart that they'll supersede us."
30:55But to me, that's a mistake.
30:58They get pretty clever
31:00and they can do all sorts of things faster than we can,
31:02sure, but they don't understand anything.
31:05They don't understand what they're doing.
31:08Understanding is a quality which needs consciousness
31:12and they don't have consciousness.
31:14- Sir Roger Penrose is a mathematician,
31:16physicist and philosopher of science.
31:19He's won the Nobel Prize in Physics
31:21for his work on black holes
31:22and shares a Wolf Prize with Stephen Hawking
31:24for their contributions to the theory of general relativity.
31:28In 1988, he published "The Emperor's New Mind,"
31:31a book venturing into the realm of consciousness studies.
31:35Most approaches to explaining consciousness
31:37using classical physics end up describing something
31:39that sounds like a really complicated computer or AI.
31:43But for some scientists and philosophers,
31:45there's a nagging sense that there's still something special
31:48about consciousness that can't be captured
31:50by classical physics alone-
31:52and, as a result, can't be reduced to simple computation.
31:57This is what led Roger to explore whether the weirdness
32:00and mystery of quantum physics might help explain
32:03the weirdness and mystery of consciousness.
32:06- So I began to wonder about,
32:08"Well, what is it that we can have in our heads
32:11which isn't something you could put on a computer."
32:14Now I am a physicalist,
32:17in the sense that I believe what's going on in our heads
32:20is part of the physical world.
32:22And it's the same with what's going on in this glass
32:25or what's going on in this thing, with this light.
32:29All those things are part of the physical world.
32:33The argument I would make is that consciousness,
32:37if you make a conscious decision,
32:39your conscious action is not a computation,
32:42but it's something which depends
32:45on this mysterious part of physics
32:47which is a sort of gap in our understanding,
32:50which is the collapse of the wave function.
32:54- In quantum mechanics,
32:55the collapse of the wave function
32:57refers to what happens when you try to,
32:58actually, measure the state of a quantum system
33:01at a given moment in time.
33:03The thing is quantum entities like electrons
33:06can exist in multiple states at the same time.
33:09Think of it like a roll of the dice.
33:11When they're in the air, they're all potential.
33:14They have no numerical value at all.
33:17But when they land, they collapse into
33:19one of 21 possible combinations for a pair of dice.
33:24But the single number you land on
33:25isn't an accurate description of the dice
33:27as they exist when they're moving through the air,
33:30when all the possibilities they could land on still exist.
33:33Penrose theorized that, perhaps, this quantum process
33:37may have a role in generating consciousness.
33:40- There's a probability of this, a probability of that.
33:42But maybe that's not the whole story.
33:45There's more to the story
33:47which means that this collapse of the wave function
33:51is something which, in our brains,
33:54we sort of harness whatever is going on.
33:58And this was the point I was trying to make in the,
34:01you asked me about the popular books I wrote,
34:04or I can call them semi-popular, if you like,
34:07they're a little more technical than many popular books.
34:10And "The Emperors New Mind" was the book I wrote first.
34:14And I was trying to promote this view that,
34:18okay, there must be something going on in our heads
34:21which requires the collapse of the wave function
34:24and that, that is the sort of foundation stone
34:27of whatever consciousness is.
34:30- Hmm. - And Stuart Hameroff
34:31read my book and he got hold of me
34:35and said, "Well, evidently you don't know
34:38about something else, which you should know."
34:40He didn't say it like that, but these were microtubules
34:44And I was completely ignorant of microtubules,
34:47he was absolutely right.
34:48I didn't know what they were for, I had never heard of them.
34:51- Stuart Hameroff is an anesthesiologist who,
34:54around the same time in the 1980s,
34:56was trying to understand consciousness
34:58by studying the process of shutting it off.
35:01Together, Roger and Stuart theorized
35:03that perhaps these microtubules,
35:05tiny straw-like structures inside ourselves
35:08that help give our cells their shape
35:10and act like highways for important information,
35:13that these microtubules could be
35:15where these quantum processes occur,
35:17giving rise to consciousness.
35:20- Anyway, so we got together and the idea started off,
35:23I think nobody really believed us.
35:26I think it's got to the point where
35:27it's sort of one of the three
35:29or four most prominent theories.
35:32So it's taken sort of seriously.
35:34And I think that it's regarded as,
35:37certainly, a different angle
35:40from what most people would think.
35:41They tend to think it's some kind
35:42of computer-like action in the brain.
35:46And what we're trying to say is,
35:48"No, it's something quite different."
35:51- Penrose and Hameroff's theory
35:52known as 'orchestrated objective reduction'
35:54remains controversial.
35:57But it's not called
35:58the hard problem of consciousness for nothing.
36:00There is no shortage of arguments
36:02for and against, virtually,
36:03every proposed explanation of the thing that makes us, us.
36:08When we were chatting a bit earlier
36:10about science and religion,
36:12I was having a little bit of trouble
36:14squaring your perspective.
36:16Because in one respect, I think there's a sense that science
36:19and religion shouldn't be afraid of one another
36:22and it oughta be able to address some of the same questions.
36:26But in another respect,
36:26we are defining two very different kind of approaches.
36:30- Yes. - So how do you
36:31define religion and how do you define science
36:35relative to one another?
36:37- Our definition of religion would be that
36:41it's the manifestation of a potential divinity in all of us
36:48and the goal is to manifest this divinity within us.
36:51- Hm. - You do it
36:52through philosophy.
36:53You do it through meditation.
36:55You do it through devotional religion.
36:57You do it through good works.
36:59In all the ways in which humanity
37:01has tried to become better and greater,
37:03it is a manifestation of the divinity within us.
37:06And science, as far as we have it now,
37:10is a quest to understand what reality is.
37:14So far it has been focused on external reality
37:18and, curiously, it has ignored ourselves.
37:21You know, at most, we are focused on the body
37:25and we've learned an enormous lot about it.
37:27But the science of the mind is still in its infancy.
37:33I mean if you ask a materialist reductionist,
37:36what's a thought?
37:39There is no space for a thought.
37:40You have to explain everything in terms of matter and energy
37:44and time and space.
37:45Where in time, space, matter, energy is a thought?
37:49What they will immediately say is that,
37:50of course, a thought is nothing but activity in the brain.
37:54But that's where you run into
37:55the hard problem of consciousness.
37:57And that's the biggest question
37:58in consciousness studies today.
38:00You know what exactly is consciousness?
38:04That it cannot be reduced to a brain.
38:07So even from a very rigorous, strict scientific perspective,
38:12you can no longer deny that there is something
38:15that it might be, in principle, impossible to explain
38:18through at least our present idea of science.
38:21- Um-hm.
38:22- And I'm open, actually,
38:23and people might think that you're a monk
38:25and committed to religion, which I am,
38:27but I'm also open in principle to the idea
38:29that I could be completely wrong.
38:31- Sure. - And Richard Dawkins
38:32or Daniel Dennett might be completely right,
38:34that it just might be matter.
38:36And therefore, all our religion,
38:39all of it might be just a matter of culture, of practice.
38:42Religion is good, but I don't subscribe to that.
38:46I subscribe to the heavy metaphysical baggage
38:48that there is an ultimate reality,
38:50which you may dress up as God,
38:52but something like that exists
38:54and it's somehow deeply connected
38:56to our existence as consciousness and as conscious beings.
39:02- There are many theologians
39:05who have a very different perspective on consciousness.
39:08And they imagine, perhaps,
39:09that there is this kind of supernatural world that exists
39:13and is perhaps outside of our own world
39:15and that our conscious experience,
39:17separate from the material world,
39:19is something else altogether.
39:20That it can't possibly be understood
39:22in the way that you are trying to understand it.
39:25Do you have a general sentiment
39:28with respect to the competing approach?
39:31- Well, very often it's not so much competing
39:34because they agree that in this life,
39:36my brain is essential for conscious.
39:38If I lose my brain due to an accident
39:39or gunshot or whatever, conscious will be gone.
39:42- Yeah. - So in that sense,
39:43we both agree.
39:44They offer a larger narrative that says, "Well then you die,
39:47but then God will resurrect you
39:49in the fullness of time." - Right, right.
39:50- I have no proof of that.
39:52I have no disprove that it doesn't happen.
39:54But for myself it doesn't,
39:56because there's simply no evidence for it.
39:58There's this other view, this idealism view,
40:00which is sort of non-religious, that says, "Yes ultimately,
40:03it's all a manifestation of the mental."
40:05And if you die, yes, your individual conscious
40:10will be absorbed into the greater whole,
40:12think of it like an ocean.
40:14You are right now an individual drop, with your own ego.
40:17But then when you die, you'll return to the infinite ocean
40:20and be part of the larger conscious.
40:22So in that sense,
40:23what is most fundamental is not the physical,
40:25it's actually the mental.
40:26- Um-hm. - But it's not
40:28personal survival.
40:29It's very different from the classical,
40:30you know you will be there in heaven
40:32floating around in some cloud in paradise.
40:34- Right.
40:36It's interesting that you could think about all there is,
40:39the sort of mystery of all of that
40:42and that drop could either be descending into some void
40:46never to be heard from again
40:48or returning to become a part of all there is.
40:51And one could hold the same thought, essentially,
40:54and frame it in those different ways-
40:55- In two different ways, yes. - Yeah.
40:57- And the physicalist would say,
40:57yeah, that drop disappears into the void, as you just said.
41:01Or an idealist would say, no,
41:02it returns sort of to that the ooze
41:05or substance from which it all came.
41:08It's a very different view,
41:09but you know might be true.
41:11- Yeah, what if this is just ineffable?
41:15We can approach it,
41:16but we'll always be infinitely far away.
41:19- Yeah, there's no guarantee that there will be
41:21a final ultimate theory of consciousness.
41:23But I know there's a guarantee
41:25that there will not be such a theory if we don't try.
41:29- The debate over how consciousness works,
41:31where it resides and why we have,
41:33it seems unlikely to be resolved in my lifetime.
41:36But as humans, we're prone to filling in gaps
41:39in our understanding with speculation and superstition.
41:42But I've gotta say that with something
41:44as fundamental to our experience as consciousness,
41:47it's hard to imagine that it doesn't have some purpose.
41:50- Maybe there is a teleology
41:52towards the elevation of consciousness
41:55and being in the Universe,
41:55which we are somehow participants in,
41:58may be leading examples of.
41:59That would be a beautiful existence.
42:02- You would like that to be-
42:03- That would be a great, that'd be wonderful.
42:05- Okay. - You know like I think
42:06the Buddhism karmic rebirth
42:08is one of the most elegant metaphysics,
42:11should it actually, in fact, really exist.
42:14Look, say the world doesn't have a teleology,
42:16there's no reason that we need to treat the world
42:19as if it doesn't.
42:21We can say, "No, we think that it is a elegant thing,
42:24a thing of beauty, a thing of importance
42:27about the expansion of consciousness in the Universe."
42:30That is the mission that we're on,
42:32that we are demonstrating
42:33and it doesn't matter if you say, wow,
42:35there's only like physics and atoms and so forth.
42:40But let's act in a way such that,
42:43that the nobility of that quest
42:46of becoming our aspirational humanity,
42:49becoming more conscious is the point of life.
42:54We can choose that. We can anoint that.
42:56We can say that is where we're going.
43:02- Consciousness is a gift.
43:05Whatever it turns out to be
43:07and whether or not it has a purpose, it is present.
43:12It's the foundation of all human action:
43:15past, present and future.
43:17It imbues us with the power to shape our world,
43:20to understand the Universe-
43:23and, sometimes, even to step back
43:26and appreciate that feeling of life itself.

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