I see that NY Times columnist David Brooks recently took an interest in the problem of mind and matter, i.e. whether we are composed entirely of matter and energy or does our conscious life somehow entail more than just physical forces at work. Brooks concludes, quite rightly, that the outcome of the academic debate regarding this topic will have “big cultural effects”. That’s why I’m interested in this debate, and have a short course about consciousness and its current academic interpretations on this web site.

One of the “big guns” in the consciousness debate is a philosopher named John Searle. I was recently watching a lecture of his that is available on YouTube, which I highly recommend. In part 3 of the lecture, he talks about his famous Chinese Room argument, which goes back to 1980. This thought experiment was meant to specifically counter the “functionalist” notion that the essence of consciousness could be captured by the right kind of algorithm, akin to a computer program. In 1980, Searle was attacking the artificial intelligence movement, specifically the notion that AI could capture and perhaps even create consciousness (well, eventually, once it could reach a sufficient level of complexity). But he was also saying something about the deeper nature of consciousness, about how it is something more than a mixture of physical processes (even though Searle will not go so far as to embrace ontological dualism).

The Chinese Room thing is a bit involved, but it can be summarized by imagining an American citizen who knows no Chinese at all, but gets a job with a Chinese newspaper as an advice columnist. The American columnist gets letters from China, written entirely in Chinese, and has no idea what the writers are asking. This resourceful American has a book, or better yet, a computer program, that tells her what to write back in response to the various Chinese character patterns. This is one big book or program, and it pretty much covers all possibilities. So this American is quite a success with the Chinese, despite having no idea what she’s saying in her columns. Searle maintains that the cognitive (computer-based) paradigm of consciousness is just as ridiculous as saying that this American advice columnist is an expert in Chinese culture and psychology. The columnist is just following instructions, like a cookbook! In effect, Searle is saying: “a computer program can’t be like consciousness, because it doesn’t understand what it’s doing”.

However, given the way that the brain’s “computer program” works, it actually can understand. The brain uses a different type of computation method than the standard computer with its do-loops and its “if-then” statements and its “and / or” gates. In the past 25 years or so, computer scientists have started to construct “neural networks” using a large population of massively connected “decision objects” arranged in layers. Suffice it to say that such computing arrangements can mimic inductive logical processes, even given “fuzzy data input”. They can mimic the way that our brains come up with abstractions like “faster” and “farther” and “injustice” and “inadequate”, etc. With enough connections and layers properly arranged, and with proper input, they can arguably come up with the high-level abstractions like “self” and “other” and “universe” and maybe even “God”.

So, contra Searle, does this mean that machines can be conscious, and that our consciousness happens because of a machine-like brain at work? Instead of answering the question, I am going to challenge Seale’s underlying and unspoken presumption. That presumption was given to us by Descarte in his motto “I think, therefore I am”. According to Descarte, the thing that turns us into conscious humans is our ability to think, to reason, to abstract and conceptualize. And I believe that notion is wrong, and that Searle has followed Descarte down this dead end (as much as Searle would protest the Cartesian dualism). Thinking and reasoning is not what makes us conscious, even if it distinguishes humankind from most of nature’s other creatures. Instead it is feeling, experience, the vivid way that the senses and emotions play within our minds. The truth is a twist on Descarte: “I feel, therefore I am”.

As with Searle’s Chinese Room set-up, the American advice columnist I had spoke of is much like a standard computer program, with its linear logic. But there is no reason why this advice columnist couldn’t gather more data and gain inferences from that data regarding the Chinese people that she writes to. She could come to understand their environment and their ways and their language, much as a massively inter-connected neural network can form inferences from fuzzy input data. She could adapt to changes in the culture, and could learn new social concerns and words as they develop — just as a neural network computer can change its inferences and learn new things with continuing data inputs. So, in the end, Searle is attacking a false problem. (But from what I saw on his video lecture, he still isn’t ready to admit it).

Searle doesn’t like to be called a “mysterian”, but he does appear to be defending the mystery of consciousness with his Chinese Room argument. But it’s a waste of time. He got it right at the start of his lecture when he spoke of the subjective nature of consciousness, of how unique each conscious experience is. I liked one of his examples of experience very much: i.e., the experience of drinking beer. He could have stopped right there! Science can tell you plenty about the experience of drinking beer, about how alcohol content and hop oils and carbonation and specific gravity and temperature will affect the sensations that the lucky beer drinker will experience. But it can’t explain just what that experience is, or just how it relates to matter and energy and their various interactions. Consciousness is something more, and for now it remains a mystery. Ponder that the next time you quaff down the golden malt nectar of the gods. As Searle seems to have done!

(As to David Brooks — he seems to be more of a white wine person. Too bad for his conscious self.)