What Creates Consciousness? | World Science Festival

The brain operates as a prediction machine: it constantly makes predictions about the causes of sensory signals and updates these predictions based on sensory input; all conscious experience (perception of world, self, free will, emotion) is a form of controlled hallucination grounded in prediction and physiological regulation of the body.

“the idea of the brain as a prediction machine goes way back and it's really this idea that everything the brain does pretty much involves it making predictions about the causes of sensory signals and then using sensory signals to Cal at to update these predictions and when it comes to Consciousness the idea is that everything that we're conscious of whether it's an experience of the world whether it's an experience of the self whether it's an experience of free will or valtion is a kind of perception it's the brain trying to make sense of a situation in some way and in that framing every kind of conscious experience can be understood can be thought of as a as underpinned by this process of the brain making predictions and updating predictions but in different ways in in different contexts the the the sort of slogan for this is that perceptual experience is a kind of controlled hallucination that we don't read the world out objectively cre actively construct it but then the way I take it is that doesn't just apply to the world around us it applies to the experience of being a self within that world it applies to emotion it applies to Free Will and ultimately it's all about physiological regulation of the body body the reason brains do this prediction is because prediction allows control and brains evolved I think fundamentally to control regulate keep the body alive”

All versions of panpsychism encountered to date face not only philosophical problems but also scientific problems: panpsychism itself is not testable and does not lead to testable predictions; only if specific panpsychist theories come up with mathematical principles specifying under what conditions consciousness arises could they become scientifically testable.

“I think all the versions of this idea of pan psychism that they've encountered all face the problem that not only is it not testable in itself but it doesn't lead to testable predictions um and I think that's doesn't mean it's wrong it just means that it's very hard as a scientist to know what to do with a view like pan psychism is a philosophical thesis it's not itself a testable Theory but a specific pans psychist theory that came up with with say some mathematical principles that say under these conditions you know you get this kind of this kind of physical system this kind of Consciousness that specific panus theories could be tested then yes but I haven't seen any any like that that's very early days we don't have any good theories of Consciousness”

Configurations of material particles that themselves do not seem to have any inner world somehow in aggregate generate inner worlds of phenomenological experience.

“configurations of material particles that themselves do not seem to have any kind of inner World they somehow in aggregate generate inner worlds of phenomenological experience”

The analogy between the hard problem of life and hard problem of consciousness is imperfect because life's hard problem concerned objective functional properties (reproduction, adaptation, metabolism) that could in principle be mechanistically explained, whereas consciousness's hard problem concerns subjective phenomenal experience (first-person experience) which has no analog in the case of life except consciousness itself.

“I don't think it's a great analogy um to be honest in the case of Life all of the things that we really wanted to explain were kind of these objective processes of reprodu tion of adaptation of metabolism growth and uh and so on and I think it was there was a certain point where we didn't see how how it is that a physical mechanism could do those functional things so some people thought we need maybe a vital Spirit but the problem was always the problem of explaining these objective behaviors that living systems show and eventually we found how DNA and so on could extend into a a story about how that could happen whereas in the case of Consciousness you we've got analoges to all those things but those are all the easy problems yes if someone said look we can't even explain how it is that people are walking and talking and remembering and so on then uh then that would be analogous to the vitalist about life but there's this further datum in the case of Consciousness which is first person subjective experience which doesn't really have an analog in the case of life except for the case of Consciousness itself right”

Consciousness is often considered the gateway to moral consideration: once we acknowledge a system is conscious and can suffer, we have moral obligations to consider it in our ethical calculus; this applies to AI, language models, and organoids—if we fail to recognize consciousness in systems we create, we risk moral catastrophe.

“I think absolutely I mean Consciousness many people think including me Consciousness is kind of the gateway to the circle of morality the circle of being that we care about the moment you acknowledge that animal I mean there's a debate about whether fish let's say are conscious but the moment you acknowledge that a fish is conscious and can feel pain and suffer then suddenly a fish is a being that we should at least take into consideration in our moral Calculus if you don't take conscious beings into consideration there's the danger of moral catastrophe so I think this very much applies to Ai and even to the emerging systems like the uh the large language models of the GPT family we don't know for sure whether they're conscious there's various reasons for thinking there's potential obstacles to Consciousness they haven't overcome yet but I think it's entirely possible that in the next 10 years or so we will develop language models that overcome those obstacles and show every sign of being conscious”

When constructing conscious AI, a reasonable strategy is to base it on architectures mimicking the human brain because humans are the one case known to produce consciousness.

“this is the one sorry this is this is the one case we know about so I mean it's true when it comes to AI you know AI systems are a long way from uh from human brains any non-human system is some distance from the one case we know for sure about so there is something to be said for looking at humanlike AI simply because it's going to be as similar to us as possible but in a different substrate”

Seth is skeptical of using conceivability thought experiments like Mary because they ask us to imagine things we cannot actually imagine (like knowing absolutely everything about anything), making conclusions about what would be surprising unreliable.

“I'm always suspicious of these kinds of thought experiments that sort of conceivability arguments they ask us to imagine things which actually we can't really imagine I mean what would it be like to know everything absolutely everything about anything I don't think we can ever really know what that would be like and therefore what would be surprising and what wouldn't be surprising”

The Frank Jackson thought experiment (Mary the neuroscientist in a black-and-white room who knows all objective facts about color perception) illustrates a gap between objective knowledge of brain mechanisms and subjective phenomenal experience: Mary could know all physical facts about color vision and yet learn something new when she first sees red.

“imagine that in the Far Far Future there's a brilliant neuroscientist named Mary who for some reason is confined to a room in which everything appears in black and white there is no color of any sort whatsoever Mary can study and access and examine the world outside but it all comes to her only in black and white even so Mary is able to reach a goal that has long eluded humankind she totally and fully unravels every last detail about the structure function physiology chemistry biology and physics of the brain she knows absolutely everything there is to know about the behavior of the brain's every neuron every molecule every atom she knows precisely what goes on inside our heads the details of all neural processes that Cascade when we see a beautiful red rose or when we Marvel at a rich Blue Sky one day Mary is allowed to leave her room and the very first thing she sees is a plump Red Tomato now here's the question from this experience of the color red will Mary learn anything new will she shrug and just move on or will she be surprised or thrilled or moved or gain some new insight through this actual experience of color”

We do not know what consciousness is, despite each of us being able to attest to what the experience of consciousness feels like, and despite some of us being able to access altered states of consciousness through meditation or chemical modification.

“we do not know what Consciousness is and that's in light of the fact that each of us I think but I do not know for sure each of us can attest to what the experience of Consciousness is what Consciousness feels like and some of us can further attest through meditative practice or chemically induced modifications can attest to what Altered States Of Consciousness are like”

About 150 years ago, there appeared to be a 'hard problem of life'—the sense that life could not be explained in physics and chemistry and required something like vital force; but this mystery was dissolved as explanatory mechanisms (like DNA) showed life could be explained physically, providing hope that the hard problem of consciousness might similarly be dissolved with better mechanistic explanations.

“about 150 years ago not so long ago people thought life couldn't be explained in terms of stuff in terms of physics and chemistry there had to be something else there seemed to be an analogous hard problem of life right but of course that didn't turn out to be right there is we still don't understand every last detail of life but there's no longer a sense of conceptual mystery that we need an an Elon vital a spark of Life something beyond the laws of of nature as they are so I I like to think that as we build Bridges between explanations in terms of mechanisms and what experience is like then maybe the Hard problem won't be solved but it might be dissolved”