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Philosophy 4610 Philosophy of Mind Week 11: The Problem of Consciousness AI and Consciousness: Recap and Transition We considered the problem of whether a computer could actually be intelligent or thinking For many people, the biggest obstacle to artificial intelligence is the question of consciousness: could a computer actually be conscious or (self)-aware? How could we tell if it were conscious? The problem of consciousness In addition to all of our behavior and functioning, each of us is also conscious – we have experiences, sensations, thoughts, etc. that we can know from a first-person perspective. The problem of explaining how this is possible is one of the most difficult in philosophy today. Defining Consciousness: “What It’s Like” “But no matter how the forms may vary, the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism.” (p. 219) According to Nagel, we can say that X is conscious if there is something that it’s like to be X. Does this seem like an adequate definition? What sorts of things satisfy the formula? Defining Consciousness: The “Subjective Quality of Experience” According to Nagel, if there is something that it is like to be me – if I am conscious – then our experience has a subjective quality (what it is like for me). Other philosophers have used the term “qualia” (singular: quale) to refer to subjective qualities of experience Example: redness of experienced red, taste of pizza, sound of foghorn Nagel and the problem of explaining consciousness According to Nagel, the subjective properties of experience, or qualia, will be very difficult to explain from a scientific point of view The reason is that scientific explanations are objective (third-person) explanations. But qualia or subjective qualities are known only from a subjective (first-person) point of view. Scientific Explanation: the ‘view from nowhere’ Scientific explanations normally work by abstra