Philosopher David Chalmers: «Perhaps the smartphone has consciousness»

Our brains are incredibly complex, with billions of neurons exchanging trillions of signals every day. On the other hand, our inner life flows naturally and naturally: we plan things for tomorrow, fall in love, enjoy the warm weather. How does the transition from the exchange of information between individual cells to the feeling of nostalgia that we experience when we find a chewing gum insert from our childhood come about?

In 1994, the young philosopher David Chalmers stated that the study of brain processes does not allow us to understand how subjective experiences arise, why brain processes are accompanied by conscious states at all. Psychology, biology and neurophysiology deal only with particular issues. The task of philosophers is to create a theory that would eliminate this gap. The formulation of «the hard problem of consciousness,» as he called it, brought Chalmers worldwide fame. Two years later, the best-selling book The Conscious Mind was published, in which he tried to find approaches to solving this problem.

On June 14, 2016, David Chalmers gave a lecture at Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov at the invitation of the Moscow Center for the Study of Consciousness¹. We talked with him about how he imagines the problem of consciousness today, how philosophers work and why their research is important.

Psychologies We cannot imagine life without consciousness. But it still remains a mystery. For example, neuroscientists suggest that our brains make decisions before we are aware of them. What is consciousness, then? Illusion? An entertaining movie that the brain shows us so that we don’t get bored? Or something more serious?

David Chalmers: I don’t think it’s an illusion. Consciousness is the central part of what we call human. But I also don’t think it’s unique to us humans. Consciousness is something we share with many other beings — dogs, monkeys, cats. Possibly octopuses.

How is human consciousness different from animal consciousness?

We cannot know for sure. Consciousness is a very subjective thing. Forty years ago, philosopher Thomas Nagel posed the famous question: What does it feel like to be a bat? It would be easier if we had a device that could be passed over our heads and get an accurate picture on the monitor. But so far he’s gone. We have to judge the consciousness of other beings by reasoning by analogy. But I think that our consciousness is not fundamentally different from the consciousness of other beings. So far, no one has found a single key feature of consciousness that would make it unique to humans.

Could such a device appear in the future?

I think it’s quite possible. But for this device to define anything, we first need a unified theory: what consciousness is. It is necessary to understand how the connection between the physical world and mental states is carried out. Then we can scan the brain, get the data and transfer it to our consciousness. Then perhaps we could get a sense of «what it’s like to be a bat.»

Assuming we have such a theory, how could such a device work? What should it show?

The theory of panpsychism, which is close to me, says that consciousness is spread everywhere. Then you just create a device that always says yes. But, of course, the point is not that it confirms or refutes something. It should point to specific states that we call conscious, such as smell or taste. It should determine exactly what state of consciousness the subject is in, and not just whether he is conscious or not. These states, for example, in a smartphone, would be completely different than ours. What is it like to be a smartphone? Not such a stupid question if you think about it.

Where does consciousness come from then?

I like the theory of the neuroscientist Giulio Tononi. He speaks of consciousness as information integrated in a certain way. What matters is not the quantity, but the quality of this information. In the brain, information has a high degree of integration. For a smartphone, this level may be lower. But it will also be consciousness, only of a different order.

It turns out that a group of people can also have consciousness? And even for all mankind?

Yes, maybe the Earth has its own consciousness. Russia, Moscow and we, gathered around this table, also have their own consciousness. It depends on which theory you take. According to Tononi’s theory, all systems that are inside other, larger systems have their own consciousness.

You are a mathematician by training. What prompted you to take up philosophy?

I came to the conclusion that the main problem that exists in science now is the problem of consciousness. It can be approached in different ways. 200 years ago they tried to solve this problem through physics. 100 years ago it was biology. Now it is philosophy. I studied undergraduate mathematics at the University of Adelaide. In all subjects I had excellent grades, but there was one course in which I got a B. It was philosophy. I went to Oxford to continue doing mathematics. But my studies in philosophy prompted me to think about the nature of consciousness. After entering Oxford, I went on a trip to Europe. Then I began to notice that again and again I return to thoughts about consciousness. I wrote down everything that came to my mind in a notebook. And the more I watched, the more I was fascinated by this topic.

I got some ideas. As a child, I read books by the cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, which greatly influenced me. I began to correspond with him. And he invited me to work in his lab in Indiana. There were many researchers in his group: mathematicians, neuroscientists, psychologists. But they were engaged in specific tasks. I thought that philosophy would help get a more complete picture.

What experiments did you do?

I made a lot of computer models. Neural networks that could learn and develop. But this work is not entirely connected with consciousness. I did a lot of thought experiments. But I also paid a lot of attention to the experiments of psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists and cyberneticians.

What is the task of a philosopher? Bring together data from different sciences? Or offer a different perspective?

One of the tasks of philosophy is to help create a general picture of the world. There are separate disciplines: mathematics, physics, neurobiology, psychology. Each of them works on one element — whether it be elementary particles, cells of a living organism or mental processes. The philosopher can step back and look at the situation as a whole. Of course, he must be well aware of the latest discoveries in science. But he should not be limited by them. I don’t think that philosophy is the «science of sciences» — in the Hegelian sense, as the unifier of everything. In addition, some of our results are not scientific. But they stimulate the development of theories.

Philosophers often use unusual metaphors and images to explain their thought. Where do you get inspiration for your ideas from?

It depends on what problem you are dealing with and what meaning you see in this or that image. Let’s say one of the key metaphors for the study of consciousness is the «philosophical zombie». The idea originally came from voodoo cults. Zombies are beings that had no free will and acted like slaves. Then this concept migrated to Hollywood films, where it began to refer to the living dead who behave aggressively. In philosophy, this concept is used for a thought experiment: it refers to hypothetical beings who have no consciousness, but who look and behave exactly like us. If the existence of such creatures is possible in principle, then consciousness is not limited to the processes in our brain.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about technology. For example, I am intrigued by the idea of ​​expanded consciousness: the things that surround us become carriers of our memory. The same smartphone is, in a sense, an extension of me. It helps me remember different things, navigate in space. There were no smartphones in the mid-90s. But we used the Internet metaphor. Now I’m more and more interested in the idea of ​​virtual reality: wearable headsets, helmets, goggles. It’s a whole new world. It creates many new questions. How real is virtual reality? In what sense can we speak of our existence in it? I myself have two such devices. I even took one of them with me to Moscow.

How do you assess the state of philosophy in Russia?

Russia has a wonderful philosophical and psychological tradition. Vygotsky, Pavlov, Luria. By the way, it was Pavlov who was one of the first to ask the question of how brain tissue produces subjective experiences. Today one of the most famous contemporary philosophers in the West is Vadim Vasiliev. And of course, you have a whole galaxy of new philosophers, thanks to the Moscow Center for the Study of Consciousness, everyone knows the people from this Center. Two years ago, he organized a cruise to Greenland along with other famous philosophers. It was very productive.

And yet: do you believe that a smartphone can be conscious?

We have no evidence that smartphones have consciousness. But there is no clear evidence to the contrary. Intuition may suggest that this is nonsense. But can we rely on intuition here? Different cultures have different intuitions about how the world works. I care about facts. We don’t have enough data yet to say for sure.

¹ Moscow Center for the Study of Consciousness (MCIS) at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University was founded in 2009 by Dmitry Volkov, co-founder of the international investment holding SDVentures, and Vadim Vasiliev, Doctor of Philosophy, Head of the Department of the History of Foreign Philosophy of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov.