PROGRAMACIÓN PARA EL SISTEMA DE MEDICIÓN DE TALLOS DE

Once this picture of the computer is in place, Rey observes that most people would not consider the computer conscious and asks why. So far Rey has found no reason to credit the computer with consciousness, but in working through the possibilities, it seems that there is not much reason to credit ourselves with consciousness either. All of the

abilities and properties that one might point to in one's own case as grounds for maintaining that one is conscious might be satisfied by the computer, but most of us are not willing to credit it with consciousness. Why the confidence in our own case?

Rey claims that most people maintain that 'conscious states are not the kind of states that will be captured by any

such computational program'. (Rey, 1995, 129) Some claim that an additional dualistic property is needed, while others

maintain that some unspecified physical property is required. Rey fbllows Dennett (1991) in calling such people

'qualiaphiles' and groups their views together under the heading ' COG-transcendent conceptions of consciousness' or

'strong notions of consciousness'.

These views of consciousness are to be distinguished from weak notions, which involve the sorts of properties that he maintains could be exhibited by the COG computer:

wakefulness, attention, and introspectibility. When the computer is switched on and stands ready to process

information, it is wakeful. When its perceptual apparatus is directed toward some object in its environment and its inner states stand in the right relations to that thing in the world, its outputs and other inner states, it can be said to be attending to it. As we have seen, when it prints out a report which records something about one or another of its inner states in virtue of commands written into its

programming, it can be said to introspect. This, and not much more, is all Rey tells us about weak consciousness. What more might be extrapolated about his conceptions of strong and weak

consciousness?

Since he takes strong conscious properties to be phenomena lying on one side of the explanatory gap,

reconsidering his characterization of the gap is useful. He says,

...what physical facts could possibility necessitate

something's looking green, or red or being a conscious state at all? It seems that when we

reflect upon our concepts of (to use the jargon for 'the way things feel') 'qualia' and consciousness, no explanation in physical, or even

physical/computational terms seems available. (Rey, 1995, 128)

It sounds as though, for Rey, 'something's looking green or red' are examples of qualia, and 'qualia' is as he says just jargon for the way things feel. The language is confusing because, presumably, the qualitative properties being denied

are not some thing's -- properties had by some thing out there in the world -- but properties of some conscious states.

Rey's claims, it seems obvious, are not about properties in the external world, but about the existence of properties

I of certain conscious states. The explanatory gap exists

between what we know about the brain and what we think we know about consciousness, on Rey's view, so it has nothing to do I with the properties that material objects in general might I have, at least not in any direct way. So though Rey says that [ what does not exist is 'something's looking green', he must

I

I not be denying the existence of a property had by some thing

I

I out there, but allegedly had by at least some conscious

states. It is in virtue of those states, some suppose, that things look green to us, or more generally, that things feel a " certain way to us. It is this sense of 'the way things seem'

that the physical and computational facts seem unable to explain.

This fits in with what Rey says about the kind of states some suppose are not captured by the COG program. He says that defenders of strong conscious properties maintain that there is something more, some dualistic or unspecified

physical property that the computer lacks. That property or set of properties is, as Rey claims, cognitively transcendent, something not captured by the purely computational

specifications of the computer.

Compare this conception of consciousness to what Rey calls the weak conception, the kind of conscious properties that the COG computer has: 'mere wakefulness, attention and introspectibility'. (Rey, 1995, 130) If the COG computer has weak but not strong consciousness, then it must somehow be

able to realize wakeful, attentive and introspective states without strong consciousness. Given what Rey claims about

qualia, the computer must be able to realize those states without anything seeming a certain way to it. It must be possible, for example, for the COG computer to focus its

attention on a green object, while nevertheless nothing seems green to it. How are we to render this sort of thing

intelligible? If we cannot, how are we to render the notions of strong and weak consciousness intelligible?

One way that philosophers soften up our intuitions in this area is with the alleged logical possibility of zombies

(Chalmers, 1996, for example) and their functional

descriptions. It is possible, some maintain, to imagine a creature that is molecule for molecule identical to you but nevertheless lacks conscious experience. Suppose you are drinking a cold beer and considering the pleasant hoppy

aftertaste and cool sensations in your fingertips as you hold the glass. If your zombie twin is located in a sufficiently similar environment and shares a history sufficiently similar to your own, he is enmeshed in the same causal network of

sensory inputs, motor outputs, and informational states as you are. That is to say, he is functionally identical to you: he reacts as you do to the same sensory inputs, and information is processed in him as it is in you. In particular, say, he will respond as you do if asked about the beer's taste; if prompted, he will draw his attention to the condensation on

the glass just as you might, and so on.

Judging by his behaviour and his general functional

description, he is as awake and attentive to his surroundings as you are, and'given his reports, he seems as pleased with the beer as you are. Despite all this, there is nothing of a phenomenal nature accompanying his wakefulness, attention or

introspective access. There is nothing more to him than what Rey is calling weak consciousness: his inner states have none of the qualitative feels associated with seeing green, tasting beer, or touching glass. There are, to be sure, informational states inside your zombie, and these stand in a functionally defined relation to other informational states and his

behavior, but that is more or less it. Things do not seem a certain way to him, as, some claim, they do to you.

Another way to understand the difference between you and your zombie twin (and between strong and weak consciousness) is by making a distinction between phenomenal and

psychological aspects of the mind. Chalmers (1996)

understands the distinction in terms of feeling and doing. Phenomenal conceptions of consciousness place emphasis on what it is like to be in a particular mental state, how things seem to a subject, and so on. What role consciousness plays in the causal web is obviously important to such conceptions, but what matters most is not what conscious states do, but how they feel. For example, it is the fact that pain feels a certain way to a subject that makes pain the state that it is.

By contrast, psychological conceptions are concerned with the mind only insofar as it is the causal basis for some

behavior. It is what causes pain and pain's ensuing effects that make pain the state that it is -- how it feels to the subject, if it feels any way at all, does not enter into the essence of the state.

So when Rey claims that the COG computer is only weakly conscious, that it realizes wakeful, attentive and

introspective states without qualia, he is saying that the computer is conscious in the psychological but not phenomenal sense. Its states do the same things as yours do -- that is, they enter into the same causal relations as do yours -- but it does not feel like anything to be a COG computer, just as it does not feel like anything to be a stone. That is how it is possible for the COG computer to focus its attention on a green object, while nevertheless nothing seems green to it.

Attention, according to the psychological conception, is a matter of standing in the right set of causal relations to, say, a certain patch of green. Because, by hypothesis, the computer is equipped with the relevant transducers and

processors, it can enter into the right relations. If that is all there is to weak attention -- and all there is to the COG computer's mental life is weak states of consciousness -- then the COG computer can weakly attend to a green thing, without anything seeming green to it.

It might be said that what Rey calls 'strong consciousness' just is what is normally meant by

'consciousness' itself, and what he calls 'weak consciousness' is something else entirely, something not properly called

'consciousness'. This might lead one to suppose that it is a mistake to admit that the COG computer is conscious in any

sense at all. Not much hangs on how the computer's properties are characterized, for Rey's argument requires only that we deny whatever conscious properties we claim to have to the computer, and this most of us are willing to do. His

■- interest, early on, is not to characterize the sense in which we claim to be conscious, but to ask why we deny whatever

conscious properties we claim to have to the computer.

2.3 Introspective Evidence for Strong Conscious Properties