Henry Taylor: Consciousness is a subjective, personal thing, so scientists who study it usually rely on people to tell them what they are conscious of. The problem is that infants are probably conscious, but without speech they can't tell us. Animals like dogs, cats, octopuses, and perhaps insects may also be conscious, but they can't tell us.
There are even problems with studying adult consciousness. People may not be completely authoritative about their own consciousness. Some philosophers and scientists believe that awake, alert adults may be aware of much more than can be expressed in words.
In response to these problems, scientists, both in science and philosophy, have recently developed up-to-date methods for measuring consciousness.
For example, researchers have developed a “natural kinds” approach to study consciousness in infants and juvenile children.
It involves looking at the brains and behaviors of adults when they are aware of something, and using that to make a list of all the behaviors and brain patterns that we have when we are aware of something that we don’t have when we’re not. Scientists call these “markers” of consciousness.
Patterns of brain activity called “event-related potentials” can be detected using brain scans. Scientists operate this technique to identify brain patterns that are present when we consciously see something, but not when our awareness of it is subliminal. Some scientists believe that these patterns can also be found in infants, and even that this activity becomes stronger as the infant ages.
But developmental psychologist Andy Bremner and I have suggested that we shouldn’t rely on just one indicator of consciousness. If multiple indicators tell us that an infant is conscious, we can be more confident in our conclusions about the infant’s consciousness.
Other potential indicators that may work well in infants include the ability to pay attention to and remember actions performed by an adult and then imitate them later.
Animal Awareness
Animals are another challenge for the study of the mind. Most people think that animals like chimpanzees and dogs are conscious, but how far beyond humans on the tree of life does consciousness extend?
There is solid evidence that octopuses can feel pain. They nurse a wounded arm and avoid places where they have had unpleasant experiences.
But the evidence for consciousness in insects like bees and ants is less clear. How could we ever know? These questions are especially urgent because they have implications for how we treat animals.
Some philosophers have suggested that we should approach the issue of animal consciousness using a “light theory approach.” We can’t just take the “correct” theory of human consciousness and operate it to decide which animals are conscious, because no one knows what the correct theory of human consciousness is.
A 2022 review listed 22 different scientific theories of consciousness, and there are many more. These theories disagree with each other in many ways.
The “light theory” approach is to look at all the scientific theories of consciousness and determine which ideas they agree on. We can then operate them to determine which animals are conscious.
For example, many scientific theories of consciousness agree that being aware of something makes it easier for an organism to think about it. According to this idea, the function of consciousness might be to serve as a link between an animal's sensory perception of something and its higher cognitive abilities.
Research on the consciousness of children and animals raises the question of whether AI systems, including robots, can be conscious. The increasing presence of robots in our social and cultural lives forces us to confront tough scientific questions about how similar their minds are to ours.
There seems to be a tantalizing connection between animal consciousness and robot consciousness. One approach in robotics draws inspiration from swarming insects such as ants and bees.
After all, if you want to design a group of robots capable of exploring a immense area, you should look to organisms that have been doing it for millions of years.
However, if scientists and philosophers eventually discover that these insects are conscious, then questions will arise as to whether we need to claim that robots based on them are also conscious.
When it comes to the question of whether AI systems, including robots, can be conscious, we come across an ancient philosophical debate that predates the contemporary development of AI and shows no signs of ending.
On one side of this debate, some researchers argue that robots cannot be conscious because they do not have biological brains. This side emphasizes that the only consciousness we can be certain of is that which biological organisms have, so there is no reason to think that robots are capable of it.
The other side of the debate is that if AI systems like robots become sufficiently similar to biological creatures, then we should say they are conscious, even though they are made of metal and wire rather than flesh and blood. Until this philosophical debate is resolved, we will not know whether AI and robot consciousness are possible.
Henry Taylor, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham
This article was reprinted from Conversation under the Creative Commons license. Read original article.
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