Homework 6a: Philosophy of science and consciousness

Homework 6

Due Nov 3, 22:00

1. Philosophy of science

Read Janet D. Stemwedel’s blog post What is philosophy of science (and should scientists care)? Links to an external site.

a. Scientific anti-realism is mentioned in the fourth paragraph. What does this mean? Give an example of something that you consider non-observable (other than pure mathematical or other abstract concepts), and motivate your choice.

 b. Karl Popper said that you can never know if a scientific theory is true, but that sometimes it is possible to know that it is false. Give an argument for why it is meaningful to do science even if you accept Popper’s conclusion.

Optional reading:

Realism and anti-realism

2. Consciousness

" 'His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.' 
So wrapping himself in his blanket he went off to sleep."

Scott Fitzgerald in The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (1922)

Human consciousness has gradually become a more accepted research topic in fields ranging from neurobiology to cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. Some of the most active philosophers of mind/cognitive scientists in this area have been John Searle, David Chalmers, and Daniel Dennett. John Searle is particularly well known for his thought experiment called the Chinese Room, which deals with the possibility of mind or consciousness in a computer or algorithm. A summary in his own words is:

"Imagine a native English speaker who knows no Chinese locked in a room full of boxes of Chinese symbols (a database) together with a book of instructions for manipulating the symbols (the program). Imagine that people outside the room send in other Chinese symbols which, unknown to the person in the room, are questions in Chinese (the input). And imagine that by following the instructions in the program the man in the room is able to pass out Chinese symbols which are correct answers to the questions (the output). The program enables the person in the room to pass the Turing Test for understanding Chinese but he does not understand a word of Chinese."

Searle goes on to say, “The point of the argument is this: if the man in the room does not understand Chinese on the basis of implementing the appropriate program for understanding Chinese then neither does any other digital computer solely on that basis because no computer, qua computer, has anything the man does not have.”

(from Searle, J. (1999), ‘The Chinese Room’, in R.A. Wilson and F. Keil (eds.), The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.)

The term consciousness was not originally used by Searle, but in more recent publications he has made this more clear:

I demonstrated years ago with the so-called Chinese Room Argument that the implementation of the computer program is not by itself sufficient for consciousness or intentionality. Computation is defined purely formally or syntactically, whereas minds have actual mental or semantic contents, and we cannot get from syntactical to the semantic just by having the syntactical operations and nothing else. To put this point slightly more technically, the notion “same implemented program” defines an equivalence class that is specified independently of any specific physical realization. But such a specification necessarily leaves out the biologically specific powers of the brain to cause cognitive processes. A system, me, for example, would not acquire an understanding of Chinese just by going through the steps of a computer program that simulated the behavior of a Chinese speaker.

 (from John Searle (2010), ‘Why Dualism (and Materialism) Fail to Account for Consciousness’, in R. E. Lee (ed.), Questioning Nineteenth Century Assumptions about Knowledge, New York: SUNY Press.)

Read what Searle has to say about the Chinese Room in his more popular Scientific American article :

John Searle (1990), Is the Brain's Mind a Computer Program?, Links to an external site.Scientific American, vol. 262, No. 1, 25-31.

or even better in the longer original article:

Searle, John (1980), "Minds, Brains and Programs",  Links to an external site.Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3 (3): 417–457

Formulate your own opinion on the Chinese Room argument and provide a detailed argument
for your point of view (for or against Searle)!

Optional reading and viewing relating to consciousness

Stevan Harnad (1989), Mind, Machines and Searle Links to an external site., Journal of Theoretical and Experimental Artificial Intelligence 1: 5-25.

Christof Koch (2018), What is consciousness?, Links to an external site.Nature 557, S8-S12 (2018)

Daniel Dennett (2018), Facing up to the hard question of consciousness Links to an external site., Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 373: 20170342.

Stanislas Dehaene, Hakwan Lau and Sid Kouider (2017). What Is Consciousness, and Could Machines Have It? Links to an external site.  Links to an external site.
Science, Vol. 358, pages 486–492.

Thomas Nagel (1974). "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?". The Philosophical Review. 83 (4): 435–450

Some more popular reading

Daniel Dennett's science of the soul ( Links to an external site.New Yorker)

Roger Penrose on why consciousness doesn't compute Links to an external site.. (Nautilus, 2017)

Books

Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained Links to an external site..

Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics   Links to an external site. Links to an external site.(1989)

Roger Penrose is a mathematician and physicist who just received the 2020 Nobel prize for his work on general relativity. His arguments on the necessity of using quantum theory to understand human consciousness are rather more speculative.

Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind Links to an external site. Links to an external site.(1976)

Julian Jaynes argues in a highly speculative but thought-provoking way for a transition in human consciousness from a bicameral (divided into two halves) structure to today's consciousness.

Talks

Videos of many of these researchers talking about their ideas can be found online,
for example:

John Searle, Consciousness and the brain Links to an external site., (2013)

Daniel Dennett, The illusion of consciousness Links to an external site., (2003)

David Chalmers, How do you explain consciousness Links to an external site., (2014)

Antonio Damasio, The quest to understand consciousness Links to an external site. (2011),

Christof Koch, The scientific pursuit of consciousness Links to an external site. (2013)
or Understanding consciousness Links to an external site. (2014),

Sir Roger Penrose, The quantum nature of consciousness Links to an external site. (2013).

Handing in your solution

Please save your solution as a pdf file and hand it in BOTH here in Canvas as Homework 5a and on the Peergrade page. Do not write your name in the pdf file.

Note - this is a backup procedure to ensure that all your homework is graded by the TAs, since it is likely that Peergrade does not yet work for all students.

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