X-Message-Number: 5448
From: 
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 1995 12:07:04 -0500
Subject: feeling & evolution

Although this has been hashed and rehashed countless times, one more brief
note might be slightly interesting to new readers; additionally, I have a
little bit new to say.

John Clark (#5443) reiterates his statement that the Turing test
(conversation, or more generally behavior) is "all we have" to work with in
deciding whether a system (other than oneself) is conscious. Not true. We can
(in principle, and increasingly in practice) look inside at the anatomical
and physiological details; if these are not similar to our own, we have good
reason to withhold judgment or demand a higher standard of evidence. 

Something that looks, walks, and quacks like a duck may nevertheless be only
a decoy; we have to examine it more closely. Eventually we will understand
the anatomical/physiological basis of feeling and consciousness in mammals,
and will then be in a better position to judge whether only meat can feel. We
also have various kinds of inference to work with--including John's emphasis
on evolutionary questions. 

I'll interject here a brief reminder that John's belief, that intelligence
cannot exist without consciousness, tends to be refuted by the available
evidence. It is true that lower mammals almost certainly have feeling, and
that by some criteria they are much more intelligent than any existing
computer or program. But it is also true that, by some criteria, some
existing programs are much more intelligent even than people; and that some
programs, pretending to be people, can fool some people some of the time.
Surely it requires no great leap of imagination to think we will fairly soon
have programs much superior, but still without feeling or consciousness. All
of this (among other things) suggests it is certainly possible to have
intelligence (by most definitions) without consciousness. 

John thinks there can be no intelligence without consciousness because
evolution selects on the basis of behavior, and if feeling were not an
inevitable concomitant of behavior favoring survival and proliferation, then
nature would not select for feeling. Well, I am working on a little essay
about the evolutionary utility of feeling and consciousness. I come to the
opposite conclusion from John's; I think I can make a good case that feeling
does have evolutionary utility, and therefore "genetic drift" would not
eliminate a strain of conscious beings. 

For the moment I'll just indicate one aspect of this argument--viz., that
feeling (the "self circuit"or "subjective circuit," the SC) may improve the
efficiency of the organism by reducing the necessary brain weight or the
power consumption. How does it do this? By CATEGORIZING inputs and outputs.
On a primitive level, for example, one class of sensory inputs indicates "bad
environment," with the reaction "I'm leaving." Or "very bad; I'm long gone."
Without this kind of system it might be much more difficult and laborious to
match inputs with appropriate reactions. 

True enough, a "categorizing circuit" is not by definition the same thing as
a subjective circuit. One could hypothesize that an unconscious categorizing
circuit or subprogram is also possible. I'll leave further thoughts on
this--and on other aspects of the argument--for another time, but it seems
very plausible to me that the SC may be evolutionarily favored.

Robert Ettinger


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