We ended the last chapter posing the question: can computers be conscious? Implicit in this question is another one: what is the source of consciousness, and does it have to do at all with the type of physical structure?

In other words, we can ask ourselves: can consciousness be fully explained by a type of physical structure? Or can it be fully explained by a type of computation or mathematical structure? Or is there actually some missing ingredient that is required to give rise to experience? And if so, is this missing ingredient physical in nature? Can you point to it? Does it have mass? Is it a force? Does it exist in space and time? Or is this extra ingredient something non-physical like a spirit or a soul? Or just some nebulous undiscovered thing that we don’t even know how to describe?

We can start by asking ourselves what it actually means to be physical in nature. It doesn’t feel appropriate to say that something must have mass to be physical as there are mass-less particles for example. It also doesn’t feel adequate to say a physical thing must occupy space as we can imagine a point particle that has a location in space but doesn’t occupy any space. Therefore we can perhaps say something is physical in nature if it has some location in space-time, whether that is a point or a region. But maybe we would even consider a force to be physical in nature, so we could expand this definition to include not only things that have a location in space-time, but any type of causal interaction between those things which can be described by the laws of physics.

Now we can ponder whether or not consciousness is physical in nature and consider a few distinct possibilities…

1. Consciousness is not physical at all, and is a non-physical off-shoot from the physical world (your brain), ie it’s in some sense instantiated by or highly correlated with the physical world but cannot affect it. In other words perhaps there is a physical world which is ruled by the laws of physics, and a separate non-physical plane for consciousness that doesn’t exist in space-time (substance dualism, epiphenomenalism).
2. Consciousness is a non-physical thing (like above) but it actually affects the physical world (your brain). In other words, perhaps consciousness doesn’t exist in physical space-time but can affect things that do (interactionist dualism and to some extent dual-aspect monoism).
3. Consciousness is rooted in the physical world, ie exists in physical space, and is created by certain specific kinds of atoms or subatomic particles, or the interactions of those particles. Thus maybe “experience” is a property of certain special physical things (ie physicalism).
4. Instead of being fundamentally physical at the smallest scale, maybe consciousness is more emergent. Specifically, perhaps consciousness is created only by certain kinds of slightly larger physical structures, especially biological structures, like neurons… ie only certain configurations of atoms to create a specific kind of larger structure that allows for the emergence of consciousness.
5. All of this speculation is to explain why conscious information seems to have a special experiential quality to it. But perhaps this added quality doesn’t arise from certain physical qualities, or non-physical qualities, but from the nature of the information itself. In other words, perhaps “experience” arises from the logical structure of the information itself.

Let’s first examine the idea implicit in #1 and 2 above, which is that consciousness is arises from some sort of non-physical thing which we don’t understand well yet.

The idea posed by #1 that this non-physical conscious entity is more of an off-shoot from the physical world (something which cannot affect the physical world) seems the most problematic. Why? Well, to put it simply, we’re talking about consciousness right now. You’re reading about it on a physical computer or piece of paper. We constantly seem to transfer knowledge about this supposedly non-physical conscious entity into the physical world, which should not be possible unless consciousness can affect the physical world.

Therefore this theory would need to take the somewhat strange stance that certain aspects of the conscious experience can affect the physical world (such as knowing that you’re conscious, describing certain phenomenal experiences) but others can’t (indescribable conscious experiences). Admittedly, there are conscious experiences that we seem to know well from first hand experience but cannot easily describe (why an orange smells like an orange for example), but this bifurcation still seems strange. If consciousness is fundamentally a non-physical offshoot into some non-physical plane, why do certain aspects of consciousness seem to influence the physical world?

In order to hold this view it seems one would need to instead argue that any aspect of consciousness which does affect the physical world (ie we can describe it) is not actually a fundamental quality of consciousness but just an approximate description of it. In other words, this view might argue that our physical neurons can model or approximate certain characteristics of consciousness but that what it is to be truly conscious is not something we can actually explain.

This view is romantic in a sense as it implies that consciousness is fundamentally unknowable: it cannot be fully described or understood by physical beings. However the boundary between description and true experience seems suspect: since we can truly describe why a visual shape is the way that it is (ie why a square is a square and why a circle is a circle, and why a cat looks like a cat) does this mean the visual shapes are not truly conscious experiences?

It’s also worth noting that there are simpler and more intuitive ways of understanding why some conscious experiences are describable and others are not. One of the key mathematical structures in Sciops explains just that.

The bigger problem however is that due to this lack of causality, we have no evidence for believing the argument in the first place. In other words, since consciousness at a fundamental level cannot be explained, only approximately described, than this very argument, which is being made by a physical thing and is attempting to explain what consciousness fundamentally is, must be invalid, since consciousness cannot be explained by physical things. Thus the whole argument that consciousness is a non-physical offshoot can at best be an approximate description of consciousness, but not a fundamental explanation of the reality of consciousness.

Ok so what about option #2: Maybe consciousness is a non-physical entity which actually influences the physical world. In other words, perhaps your consciousness is this other-worldly thing that can have a causal effect on information that does exist in space-time. Of course the big challenge that any such theory has is to explain how this causal interaction can be consistent with deterministic physics.

The principle of determinism, for those who don’t know, essentially states that hypothetically if we’re given the entire current state of the universe, and all information about that state, we can apply the laws of physics to predict the future state of the universe. In other words, any future state is caused by the current state and the laws of physics. Of course as humans we don’t know the entire current state of the universe (including every single particle, its location, energy, etc) and we don’t perfectly understand the laws of physics. But if we were an all knowing being that did understand all of this, then we could fully determine all future states of the universe, not just in the next moment, but then consequently in the moment after that, and so on until the end of time. 

Another way to put this is as follows: the information that exists in space-time is sufficient to determine the other information that exists in space-time. Given this principle it would be problematic to argue that a non-physical conscious entity could also have a causal affect on the physical world. And generally determinism is the correct way to understand how the laws of physics work, with one exception: Quantum Mechanics.

Specifically, the collapse of the wave function in Quantum Mechanics is one phenomenon that physicists have not been able to understand as happening deterministically. So this is the one little window where in theory you could have some sort of non-physical (almost magical) force that doesn’t exist in space-time which causes something in the physical world to happen. In other words, quantum mechanics is the one (and perhaps only) window where a non-physical conscious entity could influence the real world. This in part explains why so many QM based theories of consciousness were born.

However there is no evidence that the collapse of the wave-function is an event which is needed to explain the causal system of neurons in the brain. In other words, in order to argue for QM as a way to have a non-physical consciousness, you would need to model out human brains to work as follows:

Sensory info enters brain > neurons process information > information gets passed to non-physical consciousness space for further processing > this information uses wave-function collapse to pass it’s computations back to the neurons > more neuronal processing > human makes an action.

These additional steps of “information gets passed to non-physical consciousness space for further processing > this information uses wave-function collapse to pass it’s computations back to the neuron” seem completely unnecessary. It’s perfectly reasonable that the neurons simply process all the information themselves and this causes the action. It’s also highly implausible that wave-function collapse is an efficient mechanism for steering the ship of neuronal computation.

In order to make the QM argument, one would need to show how every time a human talks about consciousness, or describes a conscious experience, that somehow QM is not only at play, but can exclusively causally explain this description. Thus using basic logical reasoning and Occam’s Razor (ie the simplest explanation wins), the QM model seems very unlikely.

Side note : there are in fact there are some very interesting discussion points around quantum mechanics and consciousness, but probably not of the type you would expect. We’ll cover QM in more depth in Chapter 13 once we have a solid understanding of how to calculate the nature of any conscious experience.

And beyond QM, this idea of determinism makes any idea of a non-physical consciousness very problematic. If the physical world is already capable of fully causing its future state, then there is no room for this other non-physical thing to cause its future state. This would be over-determined. This is problematic because if we already have a fully sufficient causal explanation for an event (the laws of physics) then we have no reason to believe in anything else which also just so happens to cause the exact same effect. 

To illustrate this further, imagine if I argued that magnetic forces are not only the result of magnetic fields and quantum mechanics but also are the result of magical unicorns which ride around nudging particles in different directions with their magical unicorn horns. These horns just so happen to cause the exact same effect that the magnetic fields cause. 

Obviously this argument is ridiculous and we would have no reason to believe in magical unicorns. Similarly if neuronal computations can be determined without any non-physical conscious force, then we have no reason to believe in a non-physical consciousness.

One way to get around the over-determinism argument is to actually take the somewhat controversial view that consciousness is fundamental but the laws of physics as we know them are not. In other words, one could assert that consciousness is the only fundamental source of causal interactions, and that the laws of physics only approximately describe reality. In other words, the physical world as described by physics is just an approximate description of the real conscious world which is actually fundamental.

It’s an interesting idea but we need to think through its implications. For example, how would we describe the physics of two rocks, or two uninhabited planets. Would we say (i) actually those things don’t exist at all except for our models for them in our consciousness? Or would we say (ii) they do exist, but they can only be approximately described by physics, but they are really described by consciousness? If so they of course would need to themselves be conscious. Or would we say (iii) things like planets are actually causally explained by physics but other things like brains are actually causally explained by consciousness?

It’s hard to argue against (i) as a possibility, as there is always the possibility that anything outside of our personal consciousness is just an illusion, but this would have strange consequences for our model of reality. I won’t go down this rabbit hole.

(ii) takes more of a panpsychism approach, and it is elegant to say that all things are conscious. The bigger question however is, if all things are conscious, why do we need to invent some sort of extra non-physical thing to explain that? If only some physical things were conscious on the other hand, perhaps we would need this extra ingredient to differentiate conscious things from non-conscious things. But if all physical things are conscious, and all physical things can be described by mathematical relationships, then wouldn’t it make the most sense if these mathematical relationships explained the qualitative nature of the conscious experience? And if so, why invent some new immeasurable conscious ingredient? Wouldn’t this extra ingredient be unnecessary? By introducing it, we would need to somehow show evidence that this extra intrinsic conscious stuff is actually what drives real causality, and that physics is just an approximate description of that real causality (otherwise we run into the same problems above).

Perhaps the only reasonable justification for this view is that it just seems really hard to explain our conscious experiences from physical structures. It’s not clear at all how wavefunction interactions, or neural structures for that matter, can explain the phenomenal qualities of our experiences. It has not even been clear how any sort of abstract set of “things and the relationships between things” could possibly explain red or joy.

Therefore, if such a task is impossible (hence the name the hard problem), perhaps a missing non-physical ingredient for consciousness is necessary. In other words, one might assert that if the qualitative experience of red cannot be fully explained mathematically – then there must be some sort of non-mathematical intrinsic redness to it. One could even imagine that because of this inexplicability there must be true elementary particles (or something of the like) which are intrinsically red, or intrinsically joyful, and that these intrinsic properties really govern causality, and that physics just approximately describes how they work.

But I of course would argue that such a task is not impossible, and Sciops is the proof. Sciops literally explains our conscious experiences based on neural computations and their corresponding mathematical structures. Sciops does explain why visual space feels like space, and why red feels like red. It doesn’t rely on some intrinsic mysterious property to do so, but instead explains it using the mathematical relationships in neural computations.

And this is where structural specificity and phenomenal specificity are so important for any theory of consciousness: the more our mathematical theory is structurally and phenomenally specific, then more it will feel like the theory will actually explain what phenomenal qualities truly are, rather than just relating them to mathematical structures. And as Sciops develops further, and becomes more and more specific, I believe this urge to add a missing intrinsic ingredient will fade.

And this is a good thing, as this idea of causal intrinsic conscious qualities has extreme implications: it would imply that the universe is really governed by intrinsic conscious qualities, and that the laws of physics actually just approximately describe the true underlying causality. But it’s not clear how we would ever experimentally test this idea, or get evidence of the true intrinsic nature of reality. In other words, unless physics can find a way to test and verify these intrinsic qualities, such a theory is unscientific. Furthermore, even if the mathematics of physics are just merely approximately describing a true underlying conscious causal system, since physics and biology seem mostly adequate to explain how our brain works (ie how our neurons process information and how this leads to us making decisions and taking actions) shouldn’t it be likely that the existing science should be capable of at least approximately describing what our conscious qualities are like?

Finally the idea (iii) that some things are fundamentally explained by physics and others are fundamentally explained by consciousness, but are approximately described by physics seems the most problematic. This is because the laws of physics describe elementary particles and wave-functions that exist in both conscious objects (brains) and presumably non-conscious objects (rocks). So this theory would have to argue that actually there are even more fundamental structures than wavefunctions (sure this might be possible in theory) but that these structures fall into two buckets: physical things and conscious things, both of which appear to behave the same when modeled with the laws of physics. It’s a messy and overly complex theory and it’s not clear there is any real evidence to justify it.

___

The question that prompted this discussion is whether or not computers can be conscious, and the above dualistic theories may or may not be agnostic on that question. The extra non-physical ingredient that creates consciousness for example could be argued to exist in only biological or also artificial systems, depending on your view. However if we take a physicalism approach, then the theories may have a stronger view on this issue.

Physicalist Theories:

The idea that consciousness may arise from a specific type of physical particle or structure used to be more popular, as it feels somewhat intuitive on a macro-scale: humans seem to be conscious, animals seem like they could be conscious, trees seem less likely to be conscious, and rocks seem very unlikely to be conscious. And before we understood the underlying elementary particles, these macro objects (humans, rocks, etc) might have been thought to be different fundamental things.

The main reason why physicalist theories have been strongly challenged recently is the fact that the human brain is fundamentally made up of the same stuff as all other matter in the universe when you zoom in close enough. The atoms, quarks, wave-functions and potentially strings that make up our brain are the same building blocks that make up a tree, or a rock for example. So it seems unlikely that any particular physical element would possess some sort of magic ingredient for consciousness, but only in biological brains. 

Therefore in order to make the small-scale argument work, you would need to model consciousness out of some rare type of particle or configuration (perhaps one we haven’t even discovered yet) and then show that this particle only exists in the brain, thus giving rise to consciousness. But even if you did that, it’s not clear at all how this would translate to the information that is included in our conscious experience as this weird phenomenon wouldn’t be necessary for basic neuronal computation. Ultimately, there is just no evidence for such a theory.

The other argument, which is actually quite different but still related to the idea of physical structures, would be to look at larger emergent biological structures. For example maybe there is something about living cells, or maybe neurons specifically that gives rise to this unique quality.

Of course this implies that I cannot simply replace those special physical configurations, (cells, neurons, electric currents, etc) with something totally different without changing the consciousness right? Let’s examine this idea with another thought experiment.

Let me tell you the story of “Bobby William’s Guide to Zombie Robots”. 

…

“Hello there Mr. Smith,” Doorman Joe smiled, tipping his far too large hard-brimmed hat to the senior member, three years his elder. Mr. Smith resented the formality, after all, he was only eleven himself for crying out loud. 

“Good Morning Joseph,” Mr. Smith snarled with a contrived rasp in his voice. 

“Anything wrong sir?”

“We lost three more of our finest men today. They just disappeared into thin air,” Mr. Smith sighed as he creaked through the splintered wood door. “I almost wonder if they’re spying on us. You haven’t seen any of them around the clubhouse have you?”

“A zombie robot in the clubhouse? Please,” Doorman Joe chuckled. “Do you really think one of those things could sneak within fifty feet of this place without the whole agency noticing?”

“I suppose you have a point,” he sighed in relief. “Well have a good one Joe.”

“You too sir.”

Dark and desolate from the hidden back alley entrance, the streams of Christmas bulbs and action figure lamps that scattered across the main hall stung the naked eyes of all who entered, no matter if it was their first visit to the clubhouse, or as was the case with Mr. Smith, a daily routine. Colonies of potato chip crumbs accumulated in the corners, and candy wrappers galloped across the floor like cowboys. It was a land of freedom. 

Now you may be asking yourself why a crucially important agency would fail to keep their premises as clean as their records, but to clubhouse members such festivals of filth were commonplace. And if any visitor were to remain unconvinced regarding the utter lack of polish or style by the suit and tie administrators, they need not look much further than the official mission statement, displayed proudly on a sheet of paper draped across the doorsill: “To Win the War of Kidz vs Zombie Robots.” 

Mr. Smith lugged his way up the main hall stairs as if his knees needed a greasing. He reached office and slammed the door with enough force to startle the scraps of parchment off of his sad excuse of a desk. Most of them were covered with crayon scribbles, the remnants of failed attack plans from months ago. But this office had seen its wins too, Mr. Smith thought. 

There was the monkey bar bomber of ‘19 – the manhunt that followed was shorter than a half eaten mini-twix bar and ended with a vampire in cuffs. The public outcry from every school in the district fueled the flames of the never-ending Prospect Park Vampire insurgence. The army was hesitant, but with the S.W.E. up 20% (Starburst Wrapper Exchange) the agency convinced them to buy the mechanical weapons needed to wage the war. 

But the Zombie Robots, they were different. Rarely seen, ever feared, rumor has it they could masquerade as a real live kid. The paranoia has infected all of us, Mr. Smith silently sighed, as tensions across classrooms grew to an all-time high. Your best friends, your classmates, sure, you could trust them. But what about Atwater Middle School across the river? How well did we really know them? 

Truth was, the agency didn’t know what to do about the Zombie Robots, until, as Mr. Smith was about to discover, right now. 

“Mr. Smith?” came the muddled pipsqueak voice of someone knocking on the office door. It sounded like a puppy gnarling on a chew toy. 

“Come… Come in,” he stuttered as if he was too impatient for the words to leave his lips. 

“Hello there,” quivered the new intern. “Umm… well… Mr. Williams would like to see you in his office.”

“Mr. Williams? Why?” Smith asked, panicked as to the reason his boss would be calling for him. The last time he walked through the broad oak doors of the President’s office he was dealt a reaming.

“I’m not sure sir,” the weasley assistant responded.

Maybe he was to be fired, Mr. Smith wondered. Could it be? After all of his devotion to the agency? They would have the nerve to sack him like a soggy bag of uneaten orange slices at a little league game?

He could feel his dread churning against the walls of his stomach as he walked through the corridors, each step accompanied by a pulse of pain across his temples. By the time Mr. Smith reached the top of the stairs, he gawked at the massive doors in front of him as if they led to the coliseum stage, thousands of savages and betrayers cheering on his looming demise. Don’t worry you’ll be fine, he assured himself, gently prying the handle ajar. 

Only the top of Mr. William’s head could be spotted above the back his leather throne, his hair standing straight up as if it was trying to sneak a peek. 

“Hello Sir, you called for me?” Mr. Smith shouted across the long, nearly empty room. Somewhere between three and four seconds later the sound echoed down the hall.

“Oh Smitty!” William growled like a grinning hyena, swirling in his chair to face the cowering figure. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost my dear friend! Come here will you?” he chuckled. 

“Ha. Ok sir,” Mr. Smith nervously hiccupped.

“Smitty I am in an absolutely fantastic mood today. Absolutely fantastic. Do you know why that is?”

“No sir. Why?”

“You want to know why? Well you’re about to! It’s your lucky day Smitty! Here,” Mr. William paused, reaching for something on his desk. “Read this.”

Without uttering a word, Mr. Smith grasped the single sheet of notebook paper and began to read silently: 

Bobby William’s Guide to Zombie Robots

My name is Bobby William, senior officer at the kidz intelligence agency, and I am an expert on Zombie Robots. For too long have I sat by only to witness the death of my fellow brothers and friends at the hands of these callous concoctions. I may only be ten years old, but in my many years of brute fighting I have learned how to defeat them, and I will now share that knowledge with you. Here are my five sacred rules to surviving and defeating Zombie Robots:

1. Avoid Darkness. Zombie Robots love the dark. Stay in out in the open where the sun will fry their circuitry.

2. Always carry a Snack Pack, preferably of the Tapioca pudding variety. Zombie Robots HATE tapioca pudding, and if you throw it at their tin heads, they will keel over and die. 

3. Walk alone. Zombie Robots will only attack large groups of us because they don’t think one measly kid is worth the fight.

4. Never run from Zombie Robots. They are faster than you, and when they see weakness in you, you’re as good as dead. Stand tall to them like they’re a pack of bears in the forest.

5. The most important rule. Zombie Robots absolutely hate loud noises. If you are ever vulnerable, if you’re alone in a place without witnesses, if you feel scared, if you are in Zombie Robot territory: SCREAM AS LOUD AS YOU CAN!

Good luck my friends. Follow these rules and we will conquer the Zombie Robots together!

-Bobby William

“That’s great,” Mr. Smith forcibly smiled. “And why are you showing this to me?”

“Because Smitty, I want you to get it in the press. Every school newspaper needs to warn all fellow kids of the dangers of robot zombies.”

Mr. Smith nodded and waited for further instructions from William only to realize that his boss had none and had already retreated towards his chair. 

“Well, what are you still doing here?” Bobby asked starkly, but before he could glance up from his pristine glass desk, Mr. Smith was gone… 

It was late, too late for Mr. Smith, but the reporter from The Times insisted on meeting somewhere they wouldn’t be seen: the school library, after hours, 5:30 PM. She paced in with her scratchy brown blazer, horn rimmed glasses, a cold box of juice – up, and a chocolate cinnamon cigar tucked behind her left ear. Veronica, she introduced herself. 

Before Mr. Smith could bellow a single line of his script he was bombarded with a barrage of questions regarding the agency. Who had authority over who, when was the last change in leadership, which funds had been allocated where. By the time Mr. Smith finally caught a breath long enough to turn on the offensive, Veronica sharply stood up as if to leave. 

“Wait!” Mr. Smith startled. “Where are you going, I haven’t reviewed the press release with you yet?”

Veronica scoffed. “And why, my dear, should I publish your little press release? You’re in above your oversized hat, pushing papers like a mailboy fizzed up on Mountain Dew, and you clearly can’t tell an agency secret from a second grade game of hide and seek…” she sighed condescendingly. “Do you know where the chubby kid hides Mr. Smith? Do you? He hides in the cafeteria, barbeque sauce stuck to his golden curly locks like camouflage. Just listen for the wheezing of the retainer betweens mouthfuls of tater tots… Good day sir.”

But Mr. Smith was desperate. “You don’t understand. I need this, I’m on thin ice. What can I do?”

Veronica looked him up and down as if staring into his soul. “You know I shouldn’t even be here,” she admitted reluctantly. “My boss doesn’t even… why am I telling you this. Listen Mr. Smith, can I trust you?”

He nodded.

“Well of course I can’t trust you… that was a dumb question I’ll admit, but I can’t trust anyone over at the agency so babe you’re the best I got… I suppose there is one thing you can do for me,” she paused. “The clubhouse basement.”

“What about it?”

“There are a set of files rumored to be tucked away down there. Highly confidential. I’m after one in particular.”

“Oh I don’t kn…”

“The Gear Procedure,” Veronica interrupted. “Find it, take it, and give it to me tomorrow during lunch. I’ll have it back to you by second recess.” 

“But I can’t…”

“Then neither can I sweet cheeks. I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow. Don’t make me regret this” And with that, Veronica disappeared into the depths of dewey decimal darkness. 

___

The next morning Mr. Smith planned his basement heist with the intricacy of a delicate ballet, the plie of the crisp five dollar bill, tucked neatly into the first security guards front shirt pocket, pirouetting behind the six foot tall lego tower as the second walked past, and the triumphant arabesque of the 2:00 PM ice cream truck’s song as it echoed through the halls and lured the last set of guards toward it. He was past them effortlessly and to the basement door. 

The steps down to the underground lair were dark and getting damper as the rotting wood creaked in disapproval. At the bottom, endless rows of ancient VHS tapes mazed their way around him. And as Mr. Smith tiptoed the shallow corridor, the crackling of his shoe as it unstuck itself from the floor with each step, he took a sharp turn only to find him face to face with what he thought was a robot zombie, tin head, dead black eyes, wires sticking out of his ears like parasites. Startled, Mr. Smith leaped back, only to realize that the face was made of cardboard; a cut out, harmless, nothing more than marketing material. In doing so Mr. Smith knocked over a nearby broom and its fall brandished the old sixties vinyl record player with a tune it hadn’t hummed in decades. And like an alarm clock that was only beginning to wake itself, the player began to sing. 

“Unforgettable…” 

It began quietly, but Mr. Smith’s still started to sweat. The agents would hear this eventually he thought… 

“that’s what you are…”

And as the angelic resonance of Nat King Cole’s voice echoed through the walls of boxes, Mr. Smith started searching the walls frantically, flashlight in hand. He tossed box after box aside… Operation Mambo, no, 2012 Tax Adjustment Plan, no. Dozens of crumpled cardboard cubes later he found it: The Gear Procedure…  

“Like a song of love that clings to me…” 

The heaviest box yet crammed full of papers so dense it smelled like an entire bookstore inside… Trembling, Mr. Smith scurried the papers across his eyes. There were diagrams, bizarre symbols, gears everywhere. He couldn’t read it, and frustrated Mr. Smith grabbed another. 

“How the thought of you does things to me…” 

Procedural Overview he read hurriedly. ‘The following document outlines the basics of the gear procedure. The procedure begins, of course, in the operating room, with the subject’s skull removed, and brain exposed… The purpose of the procedure is to retain perfect consciousness and memory of the subject’s brain. So we will replace one single part of the neuron at a time with its corresponding gear.’ 

“Never before…” 

‘First the pre-synapse, and then the post, of the very first and second neuron. Firing of the neuron will be achieved through depolarization past the threshold, and the pre-synaptic gear, instead of neurotransmitters released into the synaptic cleft, will turn, and thus activate the postsynaptic gear.’ There was a diagram: 

“Has someone been more…” 

‘The strength of the signal will be communicated by the speed of the gear’s rotation. And now that the first neuronal connection is replaced, we can replace the entirety of both neurons with gears. And we can continue to do so, one neuron at a time, until the entire human’s brain is replaced with a logically identical system of microscopic gears.’

“Unforgettable…” 

Mr. Smith’s eyes glossed over, his breath choked dry, his skin raised as if ants were crawling up from his flesh underneath it, and his mind momentarily froze in shock.

Somehow he forced himself to keep reading: ‘When finished with the procedure, the human will believe they are still the same person, flesh and bones, but in reality we will permanently have full control over their minds.’

“And forever more…” 

‘The subject will be controlled and used as a tool to recruit other humans as well, to join us, Zombie Robots.’ 

“That’s how you’ll stay…” 

The agency. The entire agency? Could it be? Suddenly Mr. Smith remembered Bobby’s Guide, the words flashing before his eyes like it was his entire life. “Stay out in the open… walk alone…” 

“That’s why darling” the music begins to crescendo.

Chills ran down Mr. Smith’s legs as it all became so obvious.. “Never run away… if you feel scared, scream as loud as you can!” A trap. It’s all a trap! 

“It’s inevitable!” 

He had to warn the others. But how would he know? How would he know who was already a zombie robot? How would he… oh no… no no no no no no no… how would he know if… the thought almost forced Mr. Smith to vomit. 

How would he know if he was himself already a zombie robot? 

“That someone…” 

Panicked, heart pounding on his chest like an elephant was giving him CPR, Mr. Smith flustered through the papers for more information. There, in red at the top of the twelfth page: All subjects will have a termination code for safety reasons. Just utter the words “Code 247 terminate” and the subject will be shut off permanently. 

“So unforgettable…” 

Mr. Smith’s brain was swelling like a watermelon. Hot, cold, soaked in sweat, dry as ice, his mind was drowning in a pool of anxiety. The sounds of Nat King Cole penetrated his ears like a drill bit blasting out every thought. He couldn’t. He had to. But how could he… he didn’t want to know… of course he had to know… if he was that on the inside? He wouldn’t want to live… 

“Thinks that I am…” 

And after what felt like a lifetime of escalating panic Mr. Smith couldn’t take the pressure on his temples, his skull about to burst, his heart half-way through cardiac arrest, his eyes bleeding with image of those three short words. He held his breath, paused, and spoke: “Code 247 terminate.”

“Unforgettable too…” 

[End scene]

____

Bobby William’s guide to zombie robots poses a critical and puzzling question. In the story, when the surgeons replaced a small part of one neuron in the subject’s brain, did they fundamentally alter their consciousness? Did we just destroy a small part of this consciousness by replacing organic material with metal? 

On the one hand, if the neuron is still functionally performing the same computation, and the human is acting the same, it seems like their conscious experience should be unaltered. But on the other hand, a metal gear seems like the kind of thing that in itself should not be conscious: ie a gear seems more similar to something like a rock than a living and conscious thing.

If we are to make the claim that neurons can be conscious but metal gears cannot, we would need to identify some fundamental thing, i.e. a physical property, that neurons have but gears do not. And we would need to show that this property is necessary for consciousness.

However if you zoom in close enough, you would be very hard-pressed to find a specific physical property or particle that only exists in a living brain but not in a gear-brain. Ultimately all matter is made up of the same elementary particles or fields.

And even if physics discovered some new kind of particle or field that only exists in biological systems, which admittedly would be hugely positive evidence for the physicalist view, it still wouldn’t be clear how this particle alone would be responsible for the necessary information contained in our conscious experience. In other words it would still seem almost impossible to describe a system where this new particle/field is casually responsible for the thought “I am conscious” .

Alternatively if we look at a larger scale, we could hypothesize that consciousness somehow arises from specific kinds of emergent physical structures like neurons. Under this view, even though neurons and gears are fundamentally made up of the same stuff, what matters for consciousness is how you arrange that stuff together to create a larger structure. But is this really a physicalist theory? Or is this an information based theory? Is a rock not conscious because it isn’t carbon-based? Or is it not conscious because it isn’t doing any information processing? Similarly, a single gear by itself is not doing any information processing, but an entire gear brain certainly is.

Of course you don’t have to take this view: you could instead argue that a single neuron which does no information processing is conscious while a single gear is not. But since neurons and gears are made up of the same stuff, you would be arguing that there is some sort of structural information contained in a neuron, which is not present in a gear, which is necessary for conscious experience, even if that information, as shown by Bobby William, is not relevant at all to the behavior of the human, or the humans ability to articulate the nature of its conscious experience.

Essentially, you would be making this argument:

There are three types of information that emerge from physical systems.

1. Information that cannot create consciousness and cannot affect consciousness (ex the structural information of a rock)
2. Information which can be contained within a conscious experience, but cannot create that experience by itself (ex the information processing done by either a neural brain or a gear brain)
3. Information which causes other information to be experienced (ie to become conscious) but is itself not experienced. In other words this information isn’t included in a conscious experience, but it’s just there to support and give rise to the experience of #2 (ex the structural information in a neuron)

Thus if I wanted to argue that certain physical structures (cells, neurons) give rise to consciousness I would need to argue that those structures contain Type 3 info above, whereas other structures like gears do not. As a result, even though a gear-brain contains Type 2 info, without the presence of Type 3 info, the Type 2 info doesn’t give rise to experience.

I have never actually seen anyone articulate this theory before, but anyone who argues that emergent physical structures like neurons are the key to consciousness is actually making this argument. Let’s call this the “Supporting Physical Structure Information Theory” argument for consciousness.

Under this theory, every time I swap out part of a neuron with a gear, I’m making the system less conscious because we have less #3 information which is required for #2 information to be experienced.

Of course this theory has a lot of potential problems, and a lot of explaining to do…

• We have no evidence to believe there is such thing as Type 2 and Type 3 information
• If Type 2 information has the ability to be included in our consciousness, why would it need some sort of other non-conscious information to “prop it up”?
• How exactly would Type 3 info interact with Type 2 information to make it conscious? It seems we would need some sort of logical justification for this.
• This theory violates Occam’s Razor: it invents unnecessary concepts with no evidence that they exist.

If we don’t buy this theory (and we shouldn’t), then it seems we ought to conclude that a gear brain is equally conscious to a neurological brain. Note that this doesn’t imply that consciousness must arise from something non-physical, it just means that the type of physical structure that performs the computation doesn’t seem to matter. What is important seems to be the computation itself. In the story above, the neurological brain and the gear brain are performing the same computations. Therefore maybe consciousness arises from the nature of the information in computational systems.

Unlike dualist theories we don’t have an issue with over-determinism: we have physical things performing computations, and the nature of these computations, which are determined by the laws of physics, is that gives rise to our conscious experience. Thus an information/computation based theory of consciousness (#5 in the list at the start of this chapter) seems the most clean and promising.

There is just one problem with this type of theory however: the hard problem. We understand neural networks fairly well by now. We understand the kinds of mathematical operations they perform. And yet we have no idea how to get “red”or “joy” out of these operations. And if this is impossible, then the computational theory of consciousness doesn’t work.

Fortunately, Sciops, if correct, solves this problem. Sciops asserts that actually, even though we do understand the very basic types of calculations that neural networks perform, we have not thought deeply enough about the mathematical structures that emerge from these computations. And if you do, you start to see phenomenal qualities like space, time, color and even joy in the math.

If Sciops is correct, and if the hard problem is solvable, then it seems we have a clear winning theory of consciousness. But to be more rigorous in this claim, let’s quickly assess each theory using the criteria from Chapter 1:

1. Mathematical vs Non-Mathematical Frameworks: An information based theory of consciousness (like Sciops) is the only mathematical framework of the five. More so, it’s the only one compatible with current science.
2. Phenomenal and Structural Specificity: In other words, how accurately can you describe a specific phenomenal experience (and only that experience). Sciops does this quite well. Dualism theories may claim to do this too as they may attribute “redness” to a fundamental intrinsic “red” elementary thing, and only that thing. But isn’t that definition trivial and not actually explaining at all why red is red? The claim that “it simply just is intrinsically red” is not phenomenally specific, it just claims there is no answer to the question. Physicalist theories have made no progress at all on this issue, as there is no physical structure that has been shown to create red.
3. Evidence of Plausible Neural Structures: The mathematical structures in Sciops can be created by plausible neural structures in the brain. Dualist theories can’t even propose the types of neural structures that correspond to different experiences since these experiences are fundamentally non-physical. And physicalist theories of course argue that neuronal structures are necessary, but don’t at all speculate which neural structures give rise to which experiences. Again, edge to Sciops.
4. Elegance & Simplicity: This is where Sciops really shines and the other theories struggle. In order to make a non-physical theory of consciousness work, you need to assert that physics is not fundamental and claim the existence of some immeasurably conscious entity which drives true causality. Similarly, to make a physicalism argument work you need to assert the existence of some undiscovered new field or particle, or that the information in neural structures is necessary to “prop up” information in order to make it conscious. All of these theories violate Occam’s Razor and have no evidence to support these additional ingredients. Information based theories like Sciops are elegant and simple, as long as they can solve the hard problem of course.
5. Fundamental and Non-Arbitrary: The Supporting Physical Structure Information Theory feels very arbitrary and non-fundamental. The rest of the theories however don’t suffer from this particular objection.
6. Falsifiable Experimental Predictions: Throughout the book Sciops will make dozens of experimentally falsifiable predictions. And they are fairly simple to conduct because Sciops is consistent with current science. Dualism, Dual Aspect Monoism and Physicalism theories on the other hand would need to make very extreme experimental predictions that question the very nature of physics. For example, Dual Aspect Monoism would need to find an experiment where the consciousness model of reality would predict a different outcome than the laws of physics, and then show that the consciousness model is correct and the laws of physics are wrong. Physicalism on the other hand may need to find evidence of a new unknown particle or field that only exists in biological systems. Both of these seem very unlikely.

Based on all of the above, I don’t think it’s controversial to say that if any information based theory of consciousness can solve the hard problem, then it should be the consensus best theory of consciousness. That is what this book is about, and that is exactly what we will do.

But first, we left poor old Jimmy’s cloned heads in a couple boxes, so let’s figure out if he’s still alive in there or not.

… 

Giving credit where it’s due: the Gear Theory story above is similar to Chalmers’ thought experiment on biological vs silicon systems with a switch that toggles them back and forth (1995). Here he also presents the idea of consciousness as information and the possibility that all information creates consciousness.