Conscious Machines by Marvin Minsky
We humans do not possess much consciousness. That is, we have very little natural ability to sense what happens within and outside ourselves.
In short, much of what is commonly attributed to consciousness is mythical — and this may in part be what has led people to think that the problem of consciousness is so very hard. My view is quite the opposite: that some machines are already potentially more conscious than are people, and that further enhancements would be relatively easy to make. However, this does not imply that those machines would thereby, automatically, become much more intelligent. This is because it is one thing to have access to data, but another thing to know how to make good use of it. Knowing how your pancreas works does not make you better at digesting your food. So consider now, to what extents are you aware? How much do you know about how you walk? It is interesting to tell someone about the basic form of biped locomotion: you move in such a way as to start falling, and then you extend your leg to stop that fall: most people are surprised at this, and seem to have which muscles are involved; indeed, but few people even know which muscles they possess. In short, we are not much aware of what our bodies do. We’re even less aware of what goes on inside our brains.
Does anyone really hold the view that consciousness is just brute introspective data acquisition? If so, they need be hurt. I thought consciousness involved an outward pull and an inward push, and discrete perceptions, and something about a flashlight in a cave. Am I right, people?
Well, its not just introspective data. Its the “ability to sense what happens within and outside ourselves”. I cut out where he talks about sensing things outside us.
In any case, Marvin Minsky is right about everything.
I think it’s pretty common to gloss the distinction between conscious and non-conscious by reference to so-called self awareness. Korsgaard and her Kantian ilk have been known to preface that with ‘reflective’. Now, I don’t know how to cash out ‘reflective’ or ‘awareness’, so I don’t know if all of that reduces to ‘brute introspective data acquisition’, but certainly an unsympathetic reader would say that it did.
Them’s fightin’ wurds, dr! An unsympathetic reader would say that by “fightin'” I really intend to fight you at some point. I really don’t mean that. What I really mean, and what any sympathetic reader would glean from it, is “motivate-me-to-do-nuthin'”. Thus, them’s motivate-me-to-do-nuthin’ wurds, dr!
I’m not sure I agree with your definition of consciousness to begin with, but let’s say I’ve accepted it: is there any evidence that computers have the ability to “sense” things at all? I think “sensing” necessarily requires a subjectivity — an “I” to do the sensing.
Well that’s Minsky’s definition of consciousness. I’d much rather say such a thing doesn’t exist.
But for Minsky ‘sensing’ is just data access, so of course machines (and not just computing machines) can sense. It requires a responsiveness or receptiveness to environmental stimuli. The automatic door senses your approach. The solar-powered calculator senses the presence of sunlight.
Perhaps, properly speaking, data access requires a unity of function– that is, perhaps ‘data access’ can only be carried out by functional units (such as ‘motion sensors’ or ‘photovoltaic cells’). This isn’t subjectivity, of course, but it does provide a unified center for responsiveness and receptivity, and it avoids rampant panpsychism.
But I’m honestly not sure Minsky is worried about avoiding panpsychism.
*sigh*
Consciousness isn’t about having perfect (or even accurate!) knowledge–this is Dennett’s mistake as well! The idea that somehow in order for a state to count as consciousness it has to carry vast reams of accurate empirical data about the world is simply false; just because I don’t know the physics behind what’s going on when I’m walking doesn’t mean that I don’t have a sense (and a very good one, at that) of what it is like to walk; I can appreciate (and even understand) the beauty of a painting without the first clue about how the painter might have gone about producing it. I hope this isn’t construed as an appeal to intelligent design in any way, because it isn’t–my point is just that phenomenological knowledge and empirical knowledge are two very different things, and can’t be conflated.
I can’t even fathom what he might mean by “we humans do not possess much consciousness:” it seems to me that I’m pretty fuckin’ conscious right now, whether I interpret that consciousness correctly or not.
Alright, Descartes.
Yeah yeah, everyone picks on Descartes. I mean don’t get me wrong–dualism is crap–but there really _are_ some things that introspection can tell us, and that we are conscious is one of them.
Gotcha, sucker!
Oh shut up, you philosophical metaphor.
How do you know *you’re* not the metaphor?
And how do you know that you’re an evil demon?
Because Ann Coulter sacrifices to me daily.
So that’s why people keep listening to her…