Given the surge of interest in AI consciousness, the issue of "substrate independence" or "substrate flexibility" is now a hot topic in the metaphysics of mind. That is, does being conscious require having a particular material composition? Or can anything with the right type of functional structure and behavioral sophistication be conscious, regardless of what it's made of? Biologicists say that biological details are crucial. Functionalists say those details don't matter, as long as the right high-level functional organization is present.
Jeremy Pober and I offer a new angle into this issue, drawing on our "Copernican Principle of Consciousness". The core idea is that it would be strange -- a violation of a type of Copernican mediocrity -- if among all of the many behaviorally sophisticated species that have presumably evolved in the universe, somehow only we with our particular biological substrate are conscious. Since it's plausible that some of these other conscious organisms employ substrates different from our own, we should allow that consciousness is "substrate flexible": It does not depend on having our particular substrate. Whether we can generalize from such biological substrate flexibility to the possibility of consciousness in as different a substrate as computer chips... well, that's a complicated and uncertain issue, on which Jeremy and I diverge in the penultimate section of the paper.
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Substrate Flexibility and the Copernican Principle of Consciousness
Jeremy Pober and Eric Schwitzgebel
Abstract: We present a novel argument for the substrate flexibility of consciousness -- that is, for the idea that conscious experiences can arise in a variety of different types of physical media, not just in biological animals as they currently exist on Earth. Some recent critiques of standard arguments for the substrate flexibility of consciousness (e.g., Cao 2022; Block 2025; Seth forthcoming) have emphasized that humanlike consciousness might require our specific biological substrate. However, such critiques are too narrowly focused to address the issue of consciousness in entities whose experience may be very different from ours, for example alien life forms or future AI systems designed along unfamiliar lines. Given that it’s likely that functionally complex, behaviorally sophisticated entities have arisen or will arise many times in the observable universe, in diverse substrates, we argue that it would be a violation of a principle of Copernican mediocrity to hold that among these diverse entities, only we, or only we and a small proportion of others who share our substrate, are conscious.
Full draft here. As always, comments welcomed, either here, by email, or on my social media.
9 comments:
Biologicists say that biological details are crucial...Is Will a Crucial Unique Biological Detail when Substrates (like me) Appear Conscious for..."A Hundred Million Miracles"...I saw the play over the weekend...Great stuff too...
The intro paragraph here is signal I think. Consciousness, to me, is metaphysical stuff. We can get an idea of human intelligence by measuring IQ.
But deciding whether a thing/person is *conscious* is a a bit more tentative.It may be claimed by imaginative souls that AI is attaining capability for independent thought and decision making. But, is this really true, or, is mimicry, at bottom, is all that is going on? I am glad to know this is not decision I have to make.
I read a commentary on Dennett. Was a little disappointed there was no room for comment there. But, so it goes. Dennett was an influence for me for many reasons. He lived during my own lifetime, and, a friend actually met him.
That friend is also gone now. RIP Alan Leslie Combs and Daniel Clement Dennett.
Kudos and a hat tip to Bortolotti! well done, indeed!!!
This is way off-topic. Aren't we done with the Alien thing yet? The slobbering, toothy it-some is annoying, with the "they do not come in peace" stuff. Is there no creativity beyond time-worn terror? Older themes were more fun. If I have missed the point of slobbering, toothy horrors, OK. I am happy missing it---will continue to do so.
In the realm of imagination, most anything is possible, from slobbering, toothy aliens to flexible substrates. Ergo, I ought not be so skeptical, right? But, I am.
Lo siento mucho, pero, no muy demasiado. Teaching my tablet Spanish, see...
...Please in this context..."these diverse entities, only we, or only we and a small proportion of others who share our substrate, are conscious."...define consciousness and metaphysics for/from first person viewing...
Con sum perr miso no Demas ado
As to the comment, beginning with *con sum perr*--- brush up your Spanish. Mine is not perfect, but yours is less than that. Much.
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