Consciousness

I've been thinking a lot about Peter Watt's Blindsight since I last posted here. (See date.) The novel's issues I described before still remain. But the more I think about it, the more I think that the novel itself is a refutation to what I think is the novel's conclusion.

The conclusion of Blindsight, both my interpretation and the author's description in the afterword, is that consciousness is a burden on what could be a much more optimal system. Intelligent organisms without consciousness are more efficient and outcompete conscious organisms.

I don't attempt to refute the burden of consciousness nor do I claim that conscious organisms are faster, better or more intelligent in their niche than unconscious organisms. Cephalopods are intelligent and exploit their niche brilliantly. I'll venture a guess that they are not conscious. I suspect that "consciousness", they way we would define the term, is likely a product of social selection. Consciousness, as defined by Koch, is the ability to examine our own motivations.

Examining motivations of any sort don’t seem to have any viable Darwinian use outside a social context-- what's the point of figuring out the motivation of a female or a predator? She wants to pass on her genes and the predator wants to eat you. Who needs to figure out the motivation?

But in a social setting, where reproduction and feeding depend on rank and understanding, determining the motivation and needs of your competitors and those above and below you have significant advantages. When you get good enough at this, examining your own motivations and urges become possible. Whether or not self-examination is a selective advantage remains to be seen but it's not even possible until you can figure it out for others. Hence, my suspicion that cephalopods probably are not conscious-- not being social animals, they don't need to be.

In Blindsight, there are some very neat aliens that are intelligent without being conscious. They determine humans, cluttering up the radiosphere with social noise, must be dealt with. I'm not entirely sure I disagree with their assessment. After all, if I were being bombarded by Gilligan's Island reruns I might feel the same.

But these aren't just unconscious, intelligent animals. These are unconscious, intelligent, spacefaring beings. That requires understanding, planning, cooperative use of resources and denial of immediate advantage for long term gain. Why would anyone go into space for the first time? What the heck is out there to attract an intelligent being? Vacuum. Lots and lots of vacuum.

I'm coming to the conclusion that consciousness is not about intelligence. These are two orthogonal qualities. Intelligence is about determining optimum paths to a goal and consciousness is about setting the goal. Or, as Larry Niven said in Protector, intelligence is a tool and tools may not be used intelligently.

To restate this a little bit: Consciousness is about determining a set of possible choices. Intelligence is about choosing the right one.

Let's look at space again. I think there are a lot of reasons to go into space. Knowledge. Exploration. Dispersing humanity so we might actually survive somewhere if it all goes to crap. But none of these are intelligent motives. The aforesaid aliens already have understanding, planning, cooperative use of resources and denial of immediate advantage for long term gain-- they needed that to get into space to begin with. If they have all of that, then fixing up the planet is much less expensive and gets a much better return on investment. Why should they go into space?

But consciousness isn't about rationality or intelligence. Consciousness is about increasing the possibilities beyond what rationality or intelligence have to offer. It's about multiple motivations behind the same act. We don't just colonize Mexico because the natives have gold. We colonize them because we want to save their souls as well. You can't value gold or save souls without consciousness. Without consciousness, gold is a metal with nice conductive features and soul just aren't on the table.

Which brings us back to Blindsight. In Blindsight, the crew, with the possible exception of the ship itself and its vampire captain, are all conscious human beings. All of the possibilities (with the final exception of the unconscious aliens) are discovered by virtue of conscious understanding. That these possibilities fail is not an indictment of their pursuit. Consciousness has blind spots just like anything else. But the possibilities brought up are not ones that could have been conceived unconsciously. Hence, the book up to but not including its final conclusion is in fact a refutation of its underlying premise.