Transcription
We already know what it is to be conscious of what is happening, and we know what it means to be an agent of life. What additional theory do we need? Isn't that a demand for a ghost in the machine?
We see Darwin's theory of evolution as being central to our understanding of the animate world. At the same time, as Descartes identified, we can doubt almost everything, but we can't doubt the fact of experience. Yet, there is a danger these two central beliefs are irreconcilable. From the point of view of evolution, everything biological has a function in sustaining the species. But researchers claim no function can be found for conscious experience. And if there is no survival benefit to experience, why is it evolved? Should we accept that the theory of evolution and the reality of consciousness are just incompatible? Do we need to radically alter our understanding of one or the other, or in fact both? Or is the core issue that we have no credible theory of consciousness, and without it, we're not going to be able to make the experience compatible with science at all?
To help us untangle these questions, we have three fantastic speakers. I'm joined immediately to my right by Stuart Hammeroff, who is an American anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona. He's known for his controversial and creative theories on the quantum origin of consciousness. We're also joined by Antonella Traerier, who is an expert in the philosophy of cognition and neuroscience, and she is an assistant professor at the department of philosophy, communication, and performance at Roma Tre in Rome. And then to my far left, we're joined by the inimitable Dennis Noble, who is professor emeritus and co-director of computational physiology at the University of Oxford. And he is known for his groundbreaking work in biology and physiology. Please, can we put our hands together and welcome our speakers.
Stuart, I'm going to turn to you first and ask you to tell us whether or not we should accept the theory of evolution and the reality of consciousness are in fact just totally incompatible.
Uh, thank you, uh Gushan. I don't believe they're incompatible. I think Darwin's theory of evolution is pretty solid but needs some tweaking in the area of the uh behavior leading to survival of the fittest. Uh, I don't think the selfish gene hypothesis makes sense unless genes have feelings, because behavior by and large in simple organisms, in laboratory animals, and in all of us is driven by feelings and uh the desire for pleasure in some form. It could be hedonistic, it could be altruistic, it could be spiritual, it could be various, various forms, or avoiding displeasure. And that's why we behave to avoid uh to to survive. And I think Darwin would have embraced this. And he did talk a little, a lot about consciousness but didn't have a a good theory. And the next question will deal with, do we have a good theory? And I think we do. I'm, I'm biased because it's the theory I developed with Roger Penrose called orchestrated objective reduction, which would have been there at the origin of life and in fact preceded the or origin of life being fundamental. And my talk yesterday was about which came first, life or consciousness. And I argued for consciousness being there at the beginning and prompting, sparking the origin of life and driving its evolution ever since. So that's what I think.
That's where you're at. Fantastic. Thank you for being so clear. Um, Dennis, can I invite you to to comment on this? Uh, should we accept that the theory of evolution and consciousness are just incompatible?
Well, I would like to begin my remarks by asking the question, who ever thought that Darwin and consciousness were incompatible? You see, I have Charles Darwin's 1871 book, The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection. What does he say on page 245 in this book? He writes, "When we behold two males fighting for the possession of the female, or several male birds displaying their gorgeous plumage and performing strange antics before an assembled body of females, we cannot doubt that although led by instinct, they know what they are about and consciously exert their mental and bodily powers." And in case there should be any doubt whether this applies to females, just 12 pages later in the same book, he writes, "The exertion of some form of choice on the part of the female seems a law almost as general as the eagerness of the male." You see, after writing The Origin of Species just a few years before, Darwin understood that natural selection alone cannot explain the origin of species. The title of his own book. He therefore added two further processes: sexual selection, which is in this book, which requires, as we've just seen, conscious activity, and so germline communication, his theory of pangenesis. So how did we ever come to see Darwinism and consciousness opposed to each other? That has to do with why he wrote the 1871 book. Because his colleague who had co-discovered natural selection with him, Alfred Russell Wallace, had a totally different view from Darwin. He said, "I am," this is from, um, his, uh, um, section in a book on Darwinism called Sexual Characters Due to Natural Selection. He writes, "I am unable to follow him," that's Darwin, "more than a little way. And I will now state some of the reasons why I think his views are unsound." Now, listen to this quote from a modern neo-Darwinist, because Wallace was the founder, effectively, of neo-Darwinism, splitting off from Darwin himself. And Jerry Coyne, the modern neo-Darwinist in the United States, wrote a book called Why Evolution Is True. He also wrote in 2014, "The illusion of agency is so powerful that even strong incompatibilists like myself will always act as if we had choices, even though we know that we don't. We have no choice in the matter. But we can at least ponder why evolution might have bequeathed us such a powerful illusion." And note, incidentally, the striking contradiction. Who is this "we" that can ponder why? Because from Coyne's viewpoint, why are we even capable of doing that and choosing to say whether we agree or disagree with him? So there is a long tradition all the way from Descartes with his idea that animals are not conscious, right the way through to neo-Darwinism, not Darwinism, that denies the possibility of consciousness, at least in animals, in the case of Jerry Coyne, even us as humans. I rest my case.
Fantastic. Thank you, Dennis. I don't know. Fantastic. Antonella, what do you think?
Okay. Um, about this question, we fear that evolution or consciousness is incompatible with evolution because we don't know how, when, and why it evolved. It appeared in history. But actually, let me do a parallel here and let's talk about sex for a while. We also talk about my favorite subject in Zendley.
Do you think that sex is less mysterious than consciousness?
If you think so, you're actually wrong, because we also don't know why, how, and when sex evolved, when and how, and why the first two organisms in history started to interact in such a way as to exchange genetic material. And of course, we have different hypotheses on the table. But this is exactly what is happening with consciousness. Of course, you might say sex is more natural than consciousness. Consciousness is more ineffable or intangible. But if you think that consciousness is less natural, then perhaps you are just having a reminiscence of a religious approach that's taught us that we have an immaterial soul. And then there, that it's just a problem, or at least it's also a problem with language, than a problem for the science of the mind. And when there are problems with concepts and language, then philosophers step in, and this is why I'm here. And, uh, as we try to clarify what we mean by consciousness. Actually, we have different definitions of consciousness. We can talk about it later. But, okay, so there is another point here. I can concede that there is something private about consciousness, and this is why Descartes launched this challenge a lot of time ago. You and only you have access to your thoughts, apparently, and to your feelings. And this is perhaps the reason why consciousness is so difficult to inquire into from a scientific perspective. But this is also the result of evolution that tailored us to our own body, into our own body, in order to preserve our survival and reproduction. And in fact, when we have to preserve the survival of other creatures, like our own kids, we have more immediate, immediate access to their feelings and thoughts, at least when they are young babies. So, uh, to make it brief, the science of evolution is very young, and the science of the mind is a baby. So, let's give it time. But let's start with the right premise, that is, that consciousness is a natural phenomenon. As such, it evolved, and we are in the process of understanding it. I'm trying to contribute as a philosopher to this, uh, endeavor, and if you want, we can talk about it later.
My gosh.
Okay. Well, in that case, let's, let's dive into it. The first question is, I mean, you've already alluded to this, Antonella, that there are different definitions of consciousness, and and Stuart, you've mentioned the fact that there are, of course, different theories of consciousness. So, um, Stuart, why don't you start us off? What is consciousness and what is the theory of, or what are the theories of consciousness that you acknowledge?
Well, it's hard to define, uh, consciousness. Um, people say experience, qualia, uh, phenomenal experience, feelings, uh, thinking, etc., etc. You all know what those are. Uh, but, but it's hard to pin down. I define it as what goes away with anesthesia and comes back when the patient wakes up, which is a good operational, uh, definition and gives us a way to to test for it. Uh, as far as theories of consciousness, most theories are based on the idea that the brain is a complex computer of simple neurons, considering only the membranes and the synapses in one frequency range, uh, being algorithmic and computable. Therefore, uh, put enough together with the with the firings as bits, and you have a decent computer. And then they say if you have complex enough computation, and consciousness emerges at some higher order level. But for emergence at a higher level, you need something fundamental. And we now know that inside neurons are these structures called microtubules that have coherent oscillations not only in hertz, uh, but in kilohertz, megahertz, gigahertz, terahertz, and even faster into the quantum realm. And these can override membrane effects. So consciousness is coming from this deeper level. And, uh, as I said in my talk yesterday, I think this this, uh, depends on objective reduction. This that Roger Penrose developed as a non-computable source for something to get us out of the algorithmic, uh, cycle. So we can have things like free will and creativity and so forth, which are not really that plausible in a in a in a computational paradigm. So this objective reduction, the collapse of the wave function due to quantum gravity, is a fundamental effect that would have been present in the early, uh, universe and and the early, uh, uh, solar system, and could have, and I believe did, prompt the origin of life, uh, for these organic molecules, aromatic rings, and and organic rings to, uh, access and, uh, and have these conscious moments, some of which would be pleasurable and provide a feedback fitness function for the molecules to develop and to organize themselves to optimize pleasure and avoid displeasure. And so, in a way, I think that, uh, life, uh, consciousness didn't evolve out of life. Life originated as a vehicle for consciousness.
Interesting. Dennis, do you have a, what, what theory of consciousness do you, do you ascribe to?
Well, I ask, why on earth do we want a theory of consciousness in the first place? You see, consciousness, despite the air that gives you the impression it's a thing, is not an object at all. It's a process. It is the process of being aware of, conscious of whatever is in our surroundings. And I think, therefore, that to varying degrees, because as physiologists, we can investigate the sensory faculties that any organism has, to varying degrees, all organisms are conscious in the sense that they have life processes and are agents of that life. And that agency necessarily requires that we should be conscious of what is happening. Then we can intentionally influence what is happening. That is exactly what Charles Darwin was describing in his 1871 book. And in turn, that means that life is necessarily purposive. So we already know what it is to be conscious of what is happening, and we know what it means to be an agent of life. What additional theory do we need? Isn't that a demand for a ghost in the machine? He asks us profoundly.
Antonella, you're a, you're a philosopher. Weigh in here. I mean, there's clearly different theories. How do we weigh these things up? And let it be known that this idea that there being biological agency that goes all the way down is, um, some would argue a contentious, uh, opinion.
Okay. You are asking very hard questions for me. Like, I will take it like this. So we are already saying that here we have two people and two different theories, conception at least, of consciousness. One on the one side interested in whether consciousness is a property of the fundamental reality, on the other side, whether consciousness is free agency, that that thing that allows us to do things, to decide. Um, I think they are plausible theories of consciousness. I have issues with both of them, actually. For example, on one side, I would ask, how can we go from the micro-level experience to the macro-level experience? Because as a fundamental aspect of reality, perhaps this is a completely different concept of consciousness or related to what we are used to. On the other side, I think that free will is already a problematic definition. Free, exactly from what? So, as a philosopher, I'm more interested in the hard problem of consciousness, that is, in why, in the first place, we have experience, why we have pain, and how can we, if we can reproduce pain or feelings in an artificial system. And, uh, so as philosophers, this is still a hard question for science. Philosophers are trying to answer to this question. And I think one promising way to go is the alignment, the correlation between pain and things, situations that we want to avoid, or other organisms want to avoid, and pleasure and situations that we want to approach, approach to. So the problem here is that consciousness, pain, and pleasure could be just epiphenomena. So side effects of mechanisms that are there for other reasons. But also a shadow can is an epiphenomenon, the result, the side effect of the fact that we have physical bodies. Still, as an side effect, it can evolve because it can be selected as an intensifier, or, uh, natural selection can act on it, exactly like a shadow has been selected in squid to be like, to allow squid to be hidden in the night and not to get, uh, spotted by predators. So I will stop here. If you are interested, we can talk more, but I think that, um, this is the way to go.
Yeah, that's an interesting perspective. I mean, you, you raised this idea that it has evolved. Stuart, you were saying you think that, um, consciousness actually precedes material existence. I mean, Dennis, what are, what are your thoughts then on why it evolved?
I think the first thing to say on this is that this inside the box here consumes 20% of the total metabolic energy of our bodies. Evolution would not have produced a process that consumes so much energy if it was a mere illusion. So I take the view that how far back we can go in the evolutionary process is a big issue. Though I respect Stuart's idea that it was there from the very beginning, I'm not sure how we prove that, but I respect the position. Now, with regard to, um, how far back it can go, I go along with the very groundbreaking book on the biology of consciousness by, um, Ginsburg and Yublanca, published in 2019, The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul. Don't be misled by the word soul here. It it simply means our abilities to do the various things that we consciously do. And what they do is to come up with one of the main criteria for determining that, which is, can the organism perform unlimited associative learning? Now, you can quarrel whether whether that is a sufficient, um, definition. I think Stuart would want to go and say it's not, because what I'm going to say is that there's a fairly clear demarcation up to the period of the Cambrian explosion, about 500 million years ago. The the organisms that existed then would not have satisfied this criterion. They could do associative learning, but not unlimited associative learning, which is what we can do with things like language. So I would say that we can, with reasonable certainty, take consciousness of that, with that definition, back around 500 million years to at least the period of the explosion of the Cambrian period. Now, Stuart's view is it goes back even further than that. I just don't know. I'm just saying what I think we can determine with those kinds of experiments.
I would tend to think that learning, even unlimited associative learning, is not a good marker for consciousness because we have now large language models that are so powerfully learning things, and still I would say they are not conscious. They have no experience. I cannot hurt a machine, and so I don't think learning will bring us anywhere. Sorry, I disagree on that.
First, let's say that, uh, the idea that consciousness is an epiphenomenon or an illusion or both is an unfortunate consequence of really weak theories of consciousness. Uh, uh, that it's a, uh, complex computation of cartoon neurons. Uh, I, I think consciousness is is much more, uh, uh, sophisticated and and has been in the in the been around a long time before in the in the early universe. And I, I actually wrote a paper that consciousness arose during the Cambrian evolutionary explosion because the organ, organisms that we find there, or the fossils that we find, are very similar to some organisms that we have today, like a Xenophyophore and Sarcodictyon. And, uh, if you look at them, they have a lot of microtubules. And I think what happened then was that there was an explosion of these organisms that had a lot of microtubules, they got more conscious, and all 10, all the animal phyla developed in in a brief 10 million years. So that was an acceleration. And I used to think that was the origin. But how did we get from, uh, the primordial soup to, uh, Cambrian evolutionary explosion, a couple hundred million years at least? And I, so I've changed the view and I think now that consciousness was there from the get-go and actually sparked the origin of life. And as far as how to test that, uh, I, I'm now working in astrobiology. I've retired from anesthesiology and I'm working with, uh, my colleague Dante Lauretta, who sent a, uh, NASA probe to an asteroid called Bennu and brought back organic molecules and and things that look like my cells that we're going to be testing for, uh, signs of life. And if we see them, uh, we will then try to anesthetize them and see if they go away and see if they could be the the primordial consciousness back at the, uh, from the primordial soup. To continue watching this video, click the link in the top left or in the description below. With a free trial, you can enjoy the full talk and thousands more. Thank you for being part of the conversation.