A suggestion

I came across the blackberries illustrated (click on it to get the full picture) on the Horton Clockwise yesterday, nearly enough to be picking, and I shall think about that later. In the meantime, given my interest in the matters of consciousness in general and of picking fruit in particular (see, for example, reference 1), I offer the suggestion following.

A suggestion about consciousness, a suggestion where I use the term in the same sense as doctors, psychiatrists or neurologists might. A slightly fancier version of the sort of consciousness which we share with larger animals, such as cows. The subjective experiences of pain, of colours or of a snake in the grass being examples of what this sort of consciousness is about.

So, given that I have yet to read a convincing account of what consciousness is for;

and, that I believe that we will soon be able to build machines with a lot of interesting & important behaviours which will be more or less indistinguishable from the corresponding behaviours of humans;

I suggest that these machines will not be and will not need to be conscious in the way that we are - although this may change - eventually.

Which implies that it will be possible to do a lot of whatever it is that consciousness does, if anything, by other means.

Comment

As well as not bothering with consciousness, such machines will not need to bother about homeostatis - keeping our insides in proper working order - in the way that a human brain does – with the maintenance of homeostatis being regarded by some as an important ingredient of self, in turn an important ingredient of consciousness.

Furthermore they will be built using the sort of computing machinery available now and will not involve quantum physics or slabs of manufactured cortex living in bottles (thinking here of Aldous Huxley’s Central London Hatchery in ‘Brave New World’).

And it will be possible to buy add-ons which will provide human skills of a much higher order than those of real humans. Perhaps to pick blackberries from a hedgerow, to play chess, to count pebbles on beaches or to try for Mastermind with the complete works of Shakespeare as specialist subject. But will the list of skills which machines will continue to find difficult be interesting? Will it bear on what consciousness is for, or will the difficulties be somewhere else?

Development of example

Going back to the blackberries, in order to pick them, I need to be both awake and conscious. I need to be able to focus on the contents of the hedge and to pick out a target blackberry. I need to guide my hand and fingers to it without impaling myself on one of the intervening thorns. Moving from a mainly visual task to a mainly tactile task, I need to grasp the blackberry with my fingertips, to test that it is ripe (appearance not being the whole story), then, if it is, to ease it off its stalk and to bring it back to the waiting receptacle. In the background, the other hand needs to be holding the receptacle without spilling the contents. In sum, perception, action selection and then action.

So at the outset, and for a while, I need to be conscious in order to be able to do this. The picking, although not the holding, activity needs to be in the foreground. But after a while I find I am carrying on a deep conversation about the forthcoming visit to the (Epsom) Derby. What establishments should we visit on the way up and in what order? Shall we take a picnic? With the conversation pausing from time to time when I need to pay attention to a particularly tricky berry.

So the story here seems to be that while I need to be conscious in order to pick, I do not need to be paying attention to the picking the whole time.

And I am quite sure that in time I will be able to buy a robot which will pick the blackberries for me. And equally sure that that that robot will be quite unconscious; it will not be like me at all in that regard.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Leafing+through+the+Mollison+book.