Michael Graziano's Rethinking Consciousness, A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience [0] is a popular science book where he elaborates in a non-technical way about his attention schema theory and concludes the book discussing implications for artificial intelligence and uploading minds. During the journey, he explains his materialistic view of what consciousness is. His definition is that consciousness is the ability to have a subjective experience. He explains that through neuroscience, consciousness, or one's subjective experience, arises from the attention schema which constructs a rough simple model of the world which determines what stimuli one's attention should focus on. This interplay between stimuli, the underlying neural network, and the attention schema creates the feeling that one has a mind or subjective experience. Consciousness is not an illusion nor is it something non-physical such as a soul or essence, but rather, it emerges from the ingredients similarly to temperature and pressure emerge from the average speed of atoms in a gas in a container.
This first part of explaining the foundation necessary for the attention schema theory and how that theory actually works is somewhat confusing and left me with a feeling that somehow it was all begging the question...the conclusion was somehow assumed in the premises of the argument and it ended up in a big circle. But the next part speculating on the application to artificial (and given enough technical progress, biological) intelligence is worth the slog. He posits that there are 4 essential elements to a being that can have consciousness or a subjective experience: (1) be able to pay attention to something; (2) an attention schema that can shift the attention between different things; (3) a wide range of content (memories, data, etc.); and (4) the ability to search the content to find relevant facts on which the attention schema can make decisions to direct the attention. Following this explanation is a survey of the state of technology (in 2019) to be able to instantiate the necessary pieces to construct an artificial intelligence per this blueprint. In the discussion, emotional states and body awareness are mentioned as two possible additional necessary elements to arrive at consciousness as we know it. Graziano speculates these could be added virtually for artificial intelligences, but need more consideration in the biological scenario.
This deconstruction of the necessary elements of consciousness, Graziano suggests, could provide a means to test for it. Certainly, a computer program that was written to be an artificial intelligence could be examined to see if it in fact fulfilled the requirements. Biological wetware is harder to examine, but morphological differences between brains would show whether the structures where we currently believe the processes take place are present. As scanning resolution increases (cue the alien abduction visual), scanning and probing could allow verification that these essential elements are present. Based on morphology, he asserts that only the higher mammals have consciousness. One of the consequences of what Graziano proposes is that consciousness is algorithmic. So, on the question of Searle's Chinese Room paradox, it seems Graziano would argue that the room (not the person within), is conscious. [1] Thus any Universal Turing Machine can become conscious given the right algorithm and enough data.
The last portion of the book focuses on the possibility of uploading one's mind, whether the Matrix is possible, and the ethical challenges with duplicate "selfs", if such are ever constructed. While interesting, given how far technology has to go, it remains firmly in the realm of science fiction.
My motivation for reading this book came from discussions on the topic of free will. Graziano offers no opinion overtly. The materialistic approach of the explanation suggests he might fall into the determinist camp although he does offer that consciousness is not necessary for decision making [2] and usually, it is argued that consciousness is necessary for free will. And so, I will end it here and I have Rescher's Free Will [3] on my night stand, borrowed through interlibrary loans from the University of Idaho. I am in the middle of chapter 1 and already have a lot of reactions to put into words. (stated that way as a preview of what's to come!)
[0] Graziano, Michael S A. Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience. United States, W. W. Norton, 2019.
[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/
[2] Graziano, p.6
[3] Rescher, Nicholas. Free Will: A Philosophical Reappraisal. United Kingdom, Transaction Publishers, 2009.
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