The Ever-Present Miracle

(Reflections on Consciousness)

"They mean to tell us all was rolling blind
 Till accidentally it hit on mind
 In an albino monkey in the jungle,
 And even then it had to grope and bungle,"

From ‘Accidently on Purpose’ – Robert Frost 1962

I was thinking about consciousness and about the possibility of creating it on a computer. This may not sound like a very significant question but I think it sheds much light on consciousness itself.

Certain aspects of human consciousness can be replicated on a computer such as memory, logical reasoning or doing things like playing chess. Other things cannot be replicated but can be modeled, such as gravity and indeed all physical phenomenon. You don’t create a wind tunnel or a sound chamber in a computer you model them. The model is not the thing itself but it creates a mathematical model of the physical objects and insofar as the model represents the physical it can be very useful for certain tasks. For example, if you accurately model the acoustics of a concert hall it is possible to feed a ‘pure’ sound signal into the hall at any location and hear what it would sound like at any other location. It would also be possible to test how a car or plane will behave at different speeds and under different weather conditions. However in this case we also see the shortcomings of a model. No matter how accurately a car is modeled on a computer it will always entirely fail at the actual function of the car. A computer model of a car will never move you from point A to point B. From this we can see that the physical nature of the car is an essential attribute of the car. Unlike the case of the wind tunnel which if accurately modeled the model can be just as useful as the tunnel itself if not more useful. And can even remove the need of the physical wind tunnel.

It is clear to see that although computer modeling can do many things it will never be able to do others. You can have the most perfect model of a hammer but it will never drive a nail into the wall.

Now you may ask, what has this to do with human consciousness. Well, under our current scientific understanding the brain is always explained as some sort of complex neural network computer with countless number of interconnections. And from this it is hypothesized that consciousness simply materializes or maybe I should say etherealizes. But whatever you call it, consciousness is considered to be the product of the working brain. It is as if the brain is running a very complex ‘consciousness modeling’ algorithm. When this program runs consciousness appears.

To a certain degree I understand this hypothesis. It recognizes the fact that there is something other about consciousness. That somehow consciousness sits above the brain. That it transcends the physical matter of the brain, much like a computer algorithm transcends the matter of the computer!  But there is also something deeply flawed with the hypothesis.

How many mathematical equations does it take to make a thought? How many combinations of logical expressions do you need to get an idea? How many ‘0’s and ‘1’s must you combine before you get an ‘I’? You will never do it! Just as no amount of complex modeling can produce the tiniest amount of actual physical matter so also no amount of complex modeling can produce the tiniest amount of consciousness. Conscious beings are generally rational beings (some more than others) and as such it is possible to logically analyse them, to predict what they will do under certain situations, and then to model this behavior. With much effort it may even be possible to write an algorithm that would mimic human behavior to such a degree that someone could be fooled into thinking that the computer is conscious. But has any consciousness been created. No, not the minutest amount. Modeling conscious and consciousness itself are too totally different things. You might as well be saying that if I model a hammer accurately enough it will eventually be able to drive home the nail! But of course it will not.

Unlike the case of the model of a hammer where the essential missing attribute is the physical matter, it is not physical matter with consciousness. You might call it 'conscious matter', or you might call it a miracle!