21 September 2019 | New Scientist | 3WHAT is it like to be a bat? Philosopher
Thomas Nagel’s 1974 question has
evolved to dominate our thinking on
consciousness. Nagel’s point, simply put,
is that even if we could fly, and navigate
using sonar, we would never grasp what
it feels like to be a bat. The argument
has become the “hard problem” of
consciousness, the intractability of
explaining subjective experience.
Consciousness isn’t something you
can measure or weigh; its ethereal
quality is so fascinating as to verge on
the mystical. Certainly it attracts plenty
of mystical explanations.
So it is unsurprising that, despite
decades of thought, we have been unable
to explain how our brains create the
conscious experience. Even if we
might insist that the hard problem is
illusory, or that consciousness is simplythe way information feels when
processed in certain ways, we still
need to understand how the illusion
arises, and what kind of information
in the brain gives rise to the feeling.
Philosophy alone isn’t enough.
This is where engineering comes
in. To build something, you have to
understand it precisely. Can we make
a machine that does what a conscious
being does, that constructs a self-image
and uses it to produce descriptions ofthe world? This week, we report on just
such a project (see page 34).
The idea is that, just as any control
device needs a model of the thing it is
controlling, a brain needs a model of
itself. The experience of a phantom
limb – the feeling that an amputated
arm, for example, is still present – comes
about because the brain originally
created an internal model of the arm
to help control its movement. When
the physical arm is gone, the model,
the phantom, remains. The feeling of
consciousness could be the phantom of
the brain’s model of its own workings.
Although an engineering approach
won’t allow us to grasp the essence of
“batness”, it looks like a promising way
to build artificial consciousness. Who
knows, it might eventually explain the
mystery of our own being. ❚The lightness of being
An engineering approach to consciousness promises help with an old question
Can we make
a machine
that does what
a conscious
human does?GETTY IMAGESThe leader
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