Stevan Harnad
Julian Barnes:
The Sense of an Ending
Occasionally strained, contrived, and far-fetched, but overall the evocation of the oversensitivity cum insensitivity of youth rings true even if the recovered-memory syndrome of an elderhood Julian Barnes has not quite succeeded in channeling (an ending not yet quite sensed?) does not.
Egocentricity never quite shaken, all efforts notwithstanding.
When I was taught introductory philosophy by Rafael Demos, and he explained that philosophy was invented to wean Greeks from irrationality and teach them to think rationally, I thought (stupidly): How silly and anachronistic to still be teaching philosophy today! After all, humankind outgrew irrationality long since the GreeksâŠ
By the same token, after the fall of colonialism, and then of the Iron Curtain, when some argued that it will take generations for the newly liberated peoples to understand and practice democracy, I thought (stupidly) How silly! Democracy is as self-evident as rationalityâŠ
Googled it. No one seems to have coined it yet. So laying claim on it.
Bernie Baars: “Stevan, I think that may be the key to our disagreement. The evidence (and scientific consensus) regarding unconscious knowledge is simply overwhelming.”
It may well be (part of) the key to our disagreement, but not at all because I question the evidence concerning unconscious “knowledge”!
Unconscious knowledge is the unconscious possession of information (data, capacity, propensity). I have no problem at all with unconscious information, nor with any unconscious function.
My problem (the “hard” problem) is with conscious function, including conscious information (data, capacity, propensity).
If all “knowledge” were unconscious, there would be no hard problem, and we would not be discussing consciousness here (just perhaps the “easy” functional matter of voluntary versus involuntary behavior and accessible versus inaccessible internal information).
And it is precisely for that reason that I keep harping on the fact that it is only because we allow ourselves to keep invoking weasel-words for consciousness (“awareness, subjectivity, intentionality, mentality, 1st-personality, qualia,” etc. etc.) — which are really just vague and hopeful synonyms — that we keep fooling ourselves that we are making some headway on the hard one.
To keep ourselves honest and grounded, we should ditch all the other locutions and stand-ins for “conscious” and just resort to “felt” vs. “unfelt”: That would make the question-begging (and even the incoherence) transparent whenever we inadvertently fall into it.
And the question-begging and incoherence here was precisely the notion of an “unconscious headache” — which, when stated transparently, without equivocation, would be an “unfelt ache,” which amounts to an “unfelt feeling”: a contradiction in terms (like an uncurved curve or a colorless color).
Feeling (not “intentionality”) is the “mark of the mental.” What is not felt is not conscious. And the hard problem is to explain how and why anything at all is felt (hence mental), anywhere, ever.
Information accessibility is not what it’s about. There would be accessible as well as inaccessible information inside an insentient (= unconscious) robot (as well as inside a hypothetical “zombie,” for those who are fond of those sci-fi fantasies of speculative metaphysicians).
Bernie Baars: “Autobiographical memories are unconscious (until recalled).”
And the problem is not with the fact that the stored information is there, nor the fact that it is used and plays a causal role in adaptive function, nor even with the fact that it can be made explicit and verbalized. The problem is with the fact that recall is conscious recall — i.e., felt recall — rather than just recall!
Bernie Baars: “So are unaccessed ambiguities in language, vision, and other functions.”
Right. And the problem is not with access, but with conscious (felt) access.
Bernie Baars: “The cerebellum is unconscious; so are basal ganglia functions.”
Indeed. And the problem is not with cerebellar and basal ganglion functions, but with conscious (felt) functions.
Bernie Baars: “The corticothalamic system (under the proper conditions) is not.”
Translation: Corticothalamic functions (some, sometimes) are felt rather than unfelt.
The Problem: How and Why?
(Otherwise, all you have is an unexplained correlation, not a causal explanation of how and why some functions are felt functions.)
Bernie Baars: “Habituated input is unconscious. Automatisms are unconscious. Implicit motivation, implicit learning, incubation, preconscious perception, long-term ego functions, and yes, demonstrated cases of suppressed thoughts are unconscious.”
All just fine. And no problem.
And if all functions were like that (unfelt) there would be no problem at all.
But they’re not.
And that’s the (hard) problem.
Bernie Baars: “The evidence is simply enormous. You can be a radical subjectivist on those matters, but you will be in a small and diminishing minority. And whatâs worse, you lose a ton of explanatory power.”
I have no idea what a “radical subjectivist” is!
I am just pointing out (each time) that it is indeed a problem to explain how and why all functions are not unfelt: to explain how and why we are not zombies, if you like. (We certainly aren’t: how and why not? What’s the functional advantage? What’s the causal difference?)
The absence of an answer (or the failure even to face the problem) is the absence of explanatory power.
Bernie Baars: “I think this may be the key to our mutual incomprehension. (Decontextualized comprehension is also unconscious).”
I agree that there is indeed misunderstanding here, but I am not sure it is mutual! I think I understand completely what you are saying, Bernie, but I am not sure you are understanding — or appreciating the implications of — what I am saying (about the failure and indeed the vacuity of all attempts at causal explanation of consciousness).
(I have no idea what “decontextualized comprehension” means, but the problem, as usual, is conscious [i.e., felt] comprehension, not comprehension simpliciter, which is simply the possession of information and the capacity to act accordingly — including, if necessary, to verbalize it!)
Harnad, S. (1992) There is only one mind body problem. International Journal of Psychology 27(3-4) p. 521
Harnad, Stevan (1995) Why and How We Are Not Zombies. Journal of Consciousness Studies 1:164-167.
Harnad, S. (2000) Correlation vs. Causality: How/Why the Mind/Body Problem Is Hard. Journal of Consciousness Studies 7(4): 54-61.
Harnad, S. & Scherzer, P. (2008) First, Scale Up to the Robotic Turing Test, Then Worry About Feeling. Artificial Intelligence in Medicine 44(2): 83-89
Harnad, S. (2011) Doing, Feeling, Meaning And Explaining. In: On the Human.
I don’t think that Bernie Baars — in “The Biological Cost of Consciousness” — has succeeded in explaining the biological function of consciousness — i.e., what is it for? what does it do? what could not get done without it, and why? He has simply reaffirmed that consciousness is indeed there, and correlated with a number of biological functions — so far inexplicably.
The problem (a “hard” one) is always the same: How and why is some given biological function executed consciously rather than unconsciously? It is “easy” to explain why and how the function itself (seeing, attending, remembering, reporting, etc.) is biologically adaptive, but it is “hard” to explain how and why it is conscious, hence how and how it is biologically adaptive that it is conscious.
In considering consciousness Bernie also falls into the very common conflation between (1) the accessibility of information and (2) consciousness of the information. Information is just data, whether in a brain or in a radio, computer, or robot. To explain the function of the fact that information is accessible (hence reportable) is not to explain the function of the fact that the access is conscious access.
What — besides accessibility — is the “mark” of information being conscious? The fact that it is felt: it feels like something to have access to some information. And it feels like nothing to have access to other information. The information to which a computer or robot has access, be it ever so useful to whatever it is that the computer or robot can or does do, is not conscious. It does not feel like anything to have access to that information. The same is true for the information to which our cerebellum has access when it keeps our balance upright, or the information to which our medulla has access when it keeps us breathing, or keeps our hearts beating, especially while we are in deep (delta) sleep. When we are awake, sometimes some of that information does become conscious, in that we feel it, and then usually some further functional flexibility is correlated with it too (including reportability, in the human case). But the question remains: why and how are some states of informational access felt and some not? and what further functional benefit is conferred by the fact that the felt ones are felt? What is the causal function of the (unexplained) correlation?
Limited resources are limited resources, and resource costs are just resource costs. The fact that our brains can have access to — and can process — only a limited amount of information and not more is not an explanation of why and how having and processing (some of) that information is felt. Access and processing limitations, in and of themselves, have nothing to do with consciousness — except that they are correlated with it, so far still inexplicably.
That was the fact that was (and still is) to be explained.
Harnad, S. (2011) Minds, Brains and Turing. Consciousness Online 3.
Harnad, S. (2011) Doing, Feeling, Meaning And Explaining. In: On the Human.
See the American Hungarian Federation: AHF Reacts to Unmerited Criticism of Hungary
Excerpt:
1/24/2012 –
AHF reacts to what it sees as politically motivated, unfair, unmerited, biased criticism of Hungary. “While democratic institution building should be encouraged and debated, it should be done based on facts, and in a fair, unbiased and evenhanded manner [it must be] bereft of partisanship (or even the appearance of partisanship) and undertaken solely in furtherance of promoting Western values, not political expediency.”
Comment:
Yes, the current government of Hungary was democratically elected with a two-thirds majority. It then used that two-thirds majority to steadily and systematically erode democracy in Hungary and entrench its power with a new Constitution and autocratic measures that only a two-thirds majority in the other direction will ever be able to undo.
And, yes, the partisan politics in Hungary is appallingly polarized and vicious, but the current government is capitalizing on and stoking it shamelessly, by seeking revenge instead of reform, playing opportunistically on primitive populist and irredentist sentiments and slogans instead of acting honestly and constructively to solve Hungary’s mounting economic and social problems.
The concerted effort by the Hungarian government, in Hungary and abroad, to put a defensive spin on its transparently offensive policies and practices has found a familiar echo in this shamefully biased cry of “bias” echoed by the American Hungarian Federation (AHF).
The mounting worldwide criticism of Hungary’s government is not only far from being unfair and unmerited, but the strategy of portraying it as the result of Hungary’s being yet again victimized by villains, internal and external, will resonate only with the broad (but exclusively Hungarian) Manichean mentality of vendetta and vengeance (hinted at in the dark allusions to the former government’s prime minister in this AHF article) that the present Hungarian government is systematically cultivating at home and abroad, at the cost of Hungary’s present and future in the democratic world.
R. Daniel Kelemen (Director, Center for European Studies, Rutgers University) Christian Science Monitor, Jan 25 2012.
Wonderful performances and voices, especially Joyce DiDonato as Sycorax (the swells from pianissimo in her first aria!), Danielle de Niese as Ariel (her naturally puckish personality winning even when she over-mugs), Luca Pisaroni as Caliban (his acting as superb as his voice — and he could have been a superlative mime too) and Placido Domingo as Neptune (his still-powerful tenor/baritone voice and tone — if not his diction — surprisingly well adapted to the neo-Handel, and very moving). The arias were mostly Handel, the instrumentals and dance Rameau and some Vivaldi. The story was a Midsummer Tempest pastische, and suitably silly, with the right quota of touching moments (with the help of the magnificent music), such as an anachronistic but apt ecological lament for the sea. Most of the ornamentation was out of character, but not off-puttingly so, because the singers were otherwise so good, and probably also because of the brilliantly versatile Met orchestra’s para-baroque compromise (especially the bassoon!) always in the background, setting the context. The combination of advanced video and shoestring period props was a success too. The only downer was the faux-period text by Jeremy Sams (allegedly grounded in Dryden and Pope, but often coming out more like contemporary soap-opera corn), as flat-footed verbally as it was uninspired poetically or theatrically (“Forgive me, Please forgive me,” whines Prospero at the end, without the slightest hint why.) But even that could not spoil an enchanting experience.
Dan Dennett [DD] thinks (now) that there would be more peace of mind in one’s last years (or maybe in one’s earlier ones too) if everyone were signed up ab ovo for a no-opt-out 80-85 apoptosis policy.
When I was in my sophomoric teens, I contemplated having a vasectomy, “It is selfish and wrong for people to reproduce — to create, out of nothing, a potential for suffering, with the patient being someone other than themselves. (No potential for pleasure can compensate for this.)”
Friends said: Are you sure? What if, when you get older, you start to feel broody. You may rue this decision. It’s irreversible. You can’t opt out afterwards.
My (sophomoric) reply: “If I change my mind later on, it serves me right. What I think and feel now is right. If I feel otherwise at a later date, then I’ll be wrong, then. I disavow my later avatar.”
But I never got ’round to having that vasectomy. And I did reach the broody age, when I was glad I had not, and declared my prior callow incarnation to have been the one that was wrong.
But I never got ’round to breeding either. (And now I’ve reached an age where I think I was right the first time.)
All by way of an analogy with Dan’s stance. What about freedom? And variations and variability in the life cycle? Is humankind to be pre-inscribed in a genetically engineered, no-opt-out 80-85 apoptosis policy? Without consultation? After a plebiscite? Does everyone feel that’s right for them?
Will Dan feel that way in the hale, compos mentis and creative ’90s that I fervently wish upon him?
If Chris Hitchens had remained alive, compos mentis and creative till his ’90s, would he not have opted to keep struggling to live, think and write till the very last moment, as he did, mortally ill in his ’60s?
§ § CODA § §
DD: “Stevanâs response is all very sensible and heartfelt but he never gets around to addressing the question of whether his vision of freedom could actually be counterproductive. All the people vegetating away in nursing homes probably share (or shared, when they were compos mentis) his vision of unshackled freedom. Odysseus showed us that if there are some things, some adventures, you want to have, you have to tie yourself to the mast so that you can avoid the negative after-effects of getting what you want.”
I might be willing to pin myself to a biometric mast, but not to a chronometric one!
DD: “A question for those who just donât see the point Iâm trying to make: suppose today you got a credible offer of a two hundred year lifespan by taking a purple pill (and itâs free, if that matters). You have to take the pill now, and you donât get any guarantees at all about what sort of life youâll be living after, say, your 90th birthday. Do you take the pill? Think of how knowing something about your longevity will probably distort the rest of your life if you take the pill. Is it obvious that you should opt for the pill?“
Yes, it’s obvious, dead obvious. (And opt for euthanasia — elective or biometric — if ever you opt to opt out.)
Commentary on Dan Dennett [DD] (2011) “Whole-Body Apoptosis and the Meanings of Lives” On the Human.
DD: â…which would you prefer for your last months on earth: being struck by lightning at some point before you began losing your faculties, or an indefinitely long period of decline, during which you would gradually become unable to perform the simple actions of life and participate meaningfully in conversation or decision-making?â
More options: How about choosing the moment on the fly, based on your condition and prognosis in real time? Or pre-specifying the objective medical criteria on the basis of which you would like it to be decided when the euthanasia should be done (while youâre asleep)? (But wouldnât many people prefer to be able to say goodbye?)
DD: âWe could arrange to have a human body switch itself off quite abruptly and painlessly at a time to be determined. â
Why apoptosis? Nocturnal barbiturate administration would do the trick, if the criteria were objective and reliably (and verifiably) followed. (Apoptosis just adds a needless further layer of sci-fi on the problem, which is merely to determine when the euthanasia should take place. Surely itâs better to make that decision an objective criterion-based one rather than simply an a-priori time-based one?)
DD: âAlmost nobody would want to know to a near certainty the exact day and hour of their death, and the reasons why are made vivid in any number of death-row dramas. â
Are death-row inmates (whether guilty or innocent) representative of the rest of humanity? Surely there are many people and reasons for wanting to know when. And even if one does not know, the question is whether the cut-off should be actuarial clock-triggered or substantive criterion-triggered. (Determining the right criterion â or, for that matter, the right chronometry â are another matter, and thatâs probably where the real substantive issues reside.)
DD: âWe install in every human being and in every subsequent human embryo a system that ensures the swift, painless death at some randomly determined time between the age of 85 and 90… â
Why between 85 and 90, or between any t1 and t2? Is the idea that the interval is an absolute, universal one, that fits all of humankind? If not, then surely it is what other factors (e.g., health, performance capacity, desire to stay alive…) determine the individualsâ time-window that matter far more than keeping the moment within the time-window unpredictable.
DD: âHow do we balance the increase of suffering against the non-suffering lives of a few?â
By basing the euthanasia point on individual, objective criteria, not a-priori timing.
DD: âIf you would prefer to die by lightning bolt while you are still effective and healthy, the price you must be willing to pay is foregoing some years or months that would have been just as effective and healthy as your last days.â
Thereâs decline and thereâs decline. Some people would put up with some bodily deterioration as long as they remained mentally sharp. None of these things is predictable, for an individual, from a-priori timing alone. Thatâs just population statistics, and if weâre to be treated according to those, then we may as well not see doctors when we are ill: just type in our age and symptoms, or perhaps just our age (so we can be treated automatically for its most common illness)!
DD: â…just because we could arrange to live to be 100 (or 120!) we really have no right to use up so much more than our fair share of the worldâs resources and amenities.â
If we are to reason along those lines, itâs not just our right to live out our years that must be subordinated to the rest of the planetâs needs, but what we have a right to whilst weâre alive (and others are wanting). Thereâs much to be said for (and against) thinking along these general lines, but it has another name than euthanasia or apoptosis. And the management of how long people are entitled to live will be far less consequential than the management of other entitlements (such as wealth, property, reproduction rights, and perhaps even how we spend our days and use our capacities).
DD: âOne of the most interesting objections I have provoked in recent discussions is the suggestion that this policy, if adopted, would rob us of precious opportunities to prove our strength by enduring suffering.â
That objection conflates the question of euthanasia itself with pre-timed pop-off. And it is an example of one of the most sordid and sociopathic justifications for withholding euthanasia (reminiscent of an equally noxious credally based one): Let them suffer for the good of their souls (and mine).
Well, fine, in the cases where âtheirâ and âmineâ are co-referential. (In other words, where Iâm the one who decides Iâd rather stick around and suffer.) But thatâs the luxury problem, while there are so many who would rather not stay around and suffer, but are not allowed or able to do anything about it.
DD: â…we could use technology to fine-tune the system, to monitor various plausible measures of quality of life in both individuals and populations, so that apoptosis could more optimally track actual mean rates of decline or even rates of decline in individuals so that apoptosis could be customized in any of a dozen ways.â
Better still, once weâve figured out a better way of âcustomizingâ the hour, forget about the apoptosis and just use nocturnally administered barbiturates…
DD: âWe should pause to take seriously â very seriously â the prospect of protecting some aspects of our lives and deaths from management, and thereby reframing our landscape of decisions.â
And actuarially pre-planned apoptotic obsolescence is a protection from management?
DD: âWhy should we devote so much of our R&D budget to finding ways of extending life?â
Thatâs an entirely different matter, completely independent of pre-planned obsolescence.
DD: â…the prospect of being able to live out your remaining days relatively confident that your survivors will not have to set aside memories of a pathetic decline in order to get to the memories of you that matter. What would you trade for that? Iâd trade any number of years over 85…(I am 65 as I write this). â
Any updates on this view, now that another half-decade has gone by? The criteria for such decisions are of course personal matters, but I, for one, think the world would be far, far better off with Dan Dennetts staying around as long as they are compos mentis, than by doing them at an appointed age so as to stretch strained old-age pensions one epsilon further. If weâre going to contemplate sci-fi fantasies, looking for a way to engineer apoptosis for pre-programmed death seems to me far less to the point than looking for a way to convince people to limit reproduction, become vegans, and convert to a sustainable way of living.
But Danâs essay can also be taken to be addressing a far more important and urgent matter than pre-programmed pop-off, namely, euthanasia itself. The worst thing about the status quo on death now is the fact that most people cannot choose to die, even when they wish to. Surely before we can have consensus on pre-programmed pop-off for all (whether or not they want it) we must first agree to allow those who do want to die, now, to do so. Yes, there are complications and risks of abuse that need to be taken carefully into account, but the current status quo is cruel, unjust, and irrational.
SUMMARY
Pill-Popping vs. Apoptosis: I think that neither (1) one uniform pre-selected cut-off interval for the life of all human beings nor (2) a preference for being taken by surprise within that interval (“Unexpected-Hanging-Paradox“-style) is for everyone. Or even for most or many — but this could only be settled by a survey (or perhaps not even that, since people don’t always do what they claim they would do…)
Euthanasia itself, however, should (with due precautions against thought disorder and abuse) be available to those who wish it.
So the main point of disagreement is the basis for selecting the time-window for terminating a life. Once that interval is settled, then, if you don’t want to know exactly when the grim one will reap, you can start taking randomized, pre-coded pills before going to sleep (5 years’ worth, daily, if you like), all of them sugar except the one fateful (double-blind-coded) barbiturate.
The second point of disagreement is the no-back-out condition. I think that’s rather harsh, arbitrary, and non-optimal. So I don’t mind that the mortal can decline to take the pills altogether if he changes his mind. The rest is the argument against pre-determining the time-window actuarially for the entire population rather than basing it on individual criteria and wishes.
Compassion and Complacency, Sympathy and Sociopathy
