MINDS AND MACHINES: A RADICAL DUALIST PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The article begins with a discussion about what might constitute consciousness in entities other than oneself and the implications of the mind-brain debate for the possibility of a conscious machine. While referring to several other facets of the philosophy of mind, the author focuses on epiphenomenalism and interactionism and presents a critique of the former in terms of biological evolution. The interactionist argument supports the relevance of parapsychology to the problem of consciousness and the statistical technique of meta-analysis is cited in support of this position. There is only one entity in the universe to which we can with certainty ascribe conscious- ness and that is oneself. Thus, I cannot be certain that you who read these lines are conscious — you may, for all that I can prove to the contrary, be an insentient automaton programmed by nature to behave as if you were conscious. Naturally, I could never seriously entertain such an absurd idea. Other people resemble me so closely, in so many essential ways, that I would have to be psychotic to doubt that they resemble me also in being conscious. But, what about animals? Descartes played with the hypothesis that animals might conceivably be just animate machines, devoid of all consciousness — although I do not doubt that he treated his horses and his dogs as humanely as the next man. We, at least, cannot doubt that, if we hurt an animal, it suffers. But, as we descend the phylogenetic scale, uncertainty begins to creep in. I sometimes have my doubts about insects. Certainly I have no compunction about exterminating earwigs or cockroaches, and, when it comes to unicellular organisms, I am confident that they are devoid of all consciousness whatever. I would likewise want to withhold attributing consciousness to the entire plant kingdom. Thus, when it comes to consciousness, we seem to operate by analogy: the closer the fellow feeling, the more sure we are that the other party, too, is conscious; the more alien the other party, the less we are inclined to assume that it is conscious. What about computers? They are man-made and we do not expect our artefacts to possess properties that were not part of their design. We can, moreover, switch them on or off as we please. Thus the disanalogies are very salient. Nevertheless, I do not think it is absurdly far-fetched to suppose that the computations which they perform might conceivably be accompanied by a stream of consciousness of some sort. On the other hand, this supposition may seem somewhat gratuitous since it would add nothing to the efficient working of the machine if it were so endowed. However, at least this cannot logically be ruled out. Indeed, if future generations of computers and robots should intrude in an increasingly intimate way into our lives, we may find it hard to resist endowing them with thoughts and feelings, much as a small child is apt to do with a very lifelike doll. On the other hand, I strongly suspect that those who talk about 'conscious machines' are actually thinking about 'ultra-intelligent machines'. By this expression I understand a hypothetical machine which could surpass in every respect the cognitive capacities of a human being. This is an interesting question and one well worth discussing but it is, alas, a question on which I am not qualified to express an informed opinion. Conse-