Mysteries of consciousness

This very thought-provoking (gift link) interview with Michael Pollan about his latest book project raised some thoughts in me that I’m throwing out as a jumping off point for a general discussion.

(1) Consciousness in general and human consciousness in particular remains a deeply mysterious phenomenon. This ties in to a larger point that I would like to write a book about someday, which is that I don’t think there’s nearly as much radical agnosticism out there as the evidence, or lack of it, warrants. By radical agnosticism I mean the following idea: Human beings have to this point achieved almost no real knowledge about the universe and their place in it, and, given our evident cognitive and sociological limitations, it’s hard to be optimistic about this changing much within the lifespan of the species. Or to put it another way, our estimates of what real knowledge we have achieved are exaggerated to an almost indescribable degree.

Here’s a Yeats poem that tries to capture this idea as an aesthetic experience. The metaphor it employs about Newton involves Newton’s description of himself as a child playing with pretty shells on the seashore, while all before him the great ocean of knowledge lay unexplored:

At Algeciras: A Meditation on Death

The heron-billed pale cattle-birds
That feed on some foul parasite
Of the Moroccan flocks and herds
Cross the narrow Straits to light
In the rich midnight of the garden trees
Till the dawn break upon those mingled seas.

Often at evening when a boy
Would I carry to a friend –
Hoping more substantial joy
Did an older mind commend –
Not such as are in Newton’s metaphor,
But actual shells of Rosses’ level shore.

Greater glory in the Sun,
An evening chill upon the air,
Bid imagination run
Much on the Great Questioner;
What He can question, what if questioned I
Can with a fitting confidence reply.

I don’t believe Yeats was into either Buddhism or psychedelic drugs, both of which Pollan recommends for grappling with these questions.

(2) Speaking of psychedelics, Pollan’s ruminations on their potential value remind me of Aldous Huxley’s fascinating little book, The Doors of Perception, which I read a long time ago and need to read again.

(3) One thing that I find incredible in the quite literal sense of the word are discussions of whether AI programs/systems are already conscious, or will “soon” become conscious, which will raise various difficult questions about their personhood and rights and so forth. Pollan points out that we don’t seem to take the personhood and rights of actual people very seriously, let alone those of chickens etc., but to me the bigger problem here is that I find it just incomprehensible why anybody thinks it’s in any way plausible that an AI program could be conscious, either now or in any foreseeable future. This is because while we still have almost no idea how it is that biological systems such as ourselves are conscious, we have a perfectly good understanding of the technologies that produce the causal sequences that make Siri et al appear to be conscious, and there is absolutely no basis whatsoever to believe that those technologies are generating any consciousness, because there’s absolutely no reason to think that they would so so. Thinking that Claude & Friends are or about to become conscious is like thinking your toaster is or is about to become conscious. It seems utterly nonsensical to me, or more precisely a form of magical thinking.

(4) Pollan ends with this observation, that somewhat ironically I’m going to pollute the rest of this post with:

Interviewer: I brought something like this up earlier, but I want to ask another version of it. This morning I was reading the news and thinking, Gosh, right now, is talking to Michael Pollan about consciousness a kind of “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” conversation? I decided the answer is no, but do you ever have those doubts?

Pollan: I did at various points when I was starting on this book and the world was starting to fall apart. Like, is this how I should be using my energy? But I think that consciousness is at stake in a lot of what’s going on. One of the things Trump has done is occupy a significant chunk of our attention every single day. Our consciousness is being polluted, and protecting ourselves against that at the same time we preserve the ability to act politically is a difficult balancing act. Consciousness is a very precious realm. It’s the realm of our privacy and our freedom to think. So I think we need some kind of consciousness hygiene, particularly at this moment, where this one politician has figured out ways to command our attention. Consciousness is more relevant now than it even was 10 or 20 years ago, as something to think about, protect and nurture.

Trump as a kind of cancer on our collective and individual consciousness is a metaphor that has great force for me.