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DAVID GELERNTER is a professorof'computerscience at Yale. His book Subjectivism: The Mind from Inside will
be published by Norton later this year.
Commentary 17
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cautiously and admire from outside, and to build its intellectually bankrupt. He explains why Darwinian
own work on a deep belief in human dignity. No longer. evolution is insufficient to explain the emergence of
consciousness—the capacity to feel or experience the
BELITTLING HUMANITY. Today science and world. He then offers his own ideas on consciousness,
the "philosophy of mind"—its thoughtful assistant, which are speculative, incomplete, tentative, and pro-
which is sometimes smarter than the boss—are threat- vocative—in the tradition of science and philosophy.
ening Western culture with the exact opposite of hu- Nagel was immediately set on and (symbolically)
manism. Call it roboticism. Man is the measure of all beaten to death by all the leading punks, bullies, and
things, Protagoras said. Today we add, and computers hangers-on of the philosophical underworld. Attack-
are the measure ofall men. ing Darwin is the sin against the Holy Ghost that pious
Many scientists are proud of having booted man scientists are taught never to forgive. Even worse, Na-
off his throne at the center of the universe and reduced gel is an atheist unwilling to express sufficient hatred
him to just one more creature—an especially annoying of religion to satisfy other atheists. There is nothing
one—in the great intergalactic zoo. That is their right. religious about Nagel's speculations; he believes that
But when scientists use this locker-room braggadocio science has not come far enough to explain conscious-
to belittle the human viewpoint, to belittle human life ness and that it must press on. He believes that Darwin
and values and virtues and civilization and moral, spir- is not sufficient.
itual, and religious discoveries, which is all we human The intelligentsia was so furious that it formed a
beings possess or ever will, they have outrun their own lynch mob. In May 2013, the Chronicle ofHigher Edu-
empiricism. They are abusing their cultural standing. cation ran a piece called "Where Thomas Nagel Went
Science has become an international bully. Wrong." One paragraph was notable:
Nowhere is its bullying more outrageous than in
its assault on the phenomenon known as subjectivity. Whatever the validity of [Nagel's] stance, its
Your subjective, conscious experience is just as timing was certainly bad. The war between New
real as the tree outside your window or the photons Atheists and believers has become savage, with
striking your retina—even though you alone feel it. Richard DawMns writing sentences like, "I have
Many philosophers and scientists today tend to dis- described atonement, the central doctrine of
miss the subjective and focus wholly on an objective, Christianity, as vicious, sadomasochistic, and
third-person reality—a reality that would be just the repellent We should also dismiss it as barking
same if men had no minds. They treat subjective real- mad...." In that climate, saying anything nice at
ity as a footnote, or they ignore it, or they announce all about religion is a tactical error.
that, actually, it doesn't even exist.
If scientists were rat-catchers, it wouldn't mat- It's the cowardice of the Chronicle's statement
ter. But right now, their views are threatening all sorts that is alarming—as if the only conceivable response to
of intellectual and spiritual fields. The present problem a mass attack by killer hyenas were to run away. Nagel
originated at the intersection of artificial intelligence was assailed; almost everyone else ran.
and philosophy of mind—in the question of what con-
sciousness and mental states are all about, how they THE KURZWEIL CULT. The voice most strong-
work, and what it would mean for a robot to have them. ly associated with what I've termed roboticism is that
It has roots that stretch back to the behaviorism of theof Ray Kurzweil, a leading technologist and inventor.
early 20th century, but the advent of computing lit the The Kurzweil Cult teaches that, given the strong and
fuse of an intellectual crisis that blasted off in the 1960s
ever-increasing pace of technological progress and
and has been gaining altitude ever since. change, a fateful crossover point is approaching. He
calls this point the "singularity." After the year 2045
BULLYING NAG EL. The modern "mind fields" (mark your calendars!), machine intelligence will
encompass artificial intelligence, cognitive psycholo- dominate human intelligence to the extent that men
gy, and philosophy of mind. Researchers in these fields will no longer understand machines any more than
are profoundly split, and the chaos was on display in potato chips understand mathematical topology. Men
the ugliness occasioned by the publication of Thomas will already have begun an orgy of machinification—
Nagel's Mind & Cosmos in 2012. Nagel is an eminent implanting chips in their bodies and brains, and fine-
philosopher and professor at NYU. In Mind & Cosmos, tuning their own and their children's genetic material.
he shows with terse, meticulous thoroughness why Kurzweil believes in "transhumanism," the merging of
mainstream thought on the workings of the mind is men and machines. He believes human immortality is
Commentary 19
subjectively, within your mind, and brain that "embodies" it. Yet the
they can be examined and evalu- brain's structure is different from
ated by you alone. They do not exist the mind's. The brain is a dense
objectively. They are strictly inter- tangle of neurons and other cells in
nal to your own mind. And yet they which neurons send electrical sig-
do exist. This is intolerable! How in nals to other neurons downstream
this modern, scientific world can via a wash of neurotransmitter
we be forced to accept the existence chemicals, like beach bums splash-
of things that can't be weighed Your m i n d is, ing each other with bucketfuls of
or measured, tracked or photo- water.
w a s , a n d will a l w a y s
graphed—that are strictly private, Two wholly different struc-
that can be observed by exactly be a room w i t h a view. tures, one embodied by the other—
one person each? Ridiculous! Or at this is also a precise description of
least, damned annoying. Your m e n t a l s t a t e s computer software as it relates to
And yet your mind is, was, computer hardware. Software has
and will always be a room with a exist inside t h i s r o o m its own structure and laws (soft-
view. Your mental states exist in- ware being what any "program"
y o u c a n never leave
side this room you can never leave or "application" is made of—any
and no one else can ever enter. a n d n o o n e else c a n ever email program, web search engine,
The world you perceive through photo album, iPhone app, video
the window of mind (where you enter. T h e w o r l d y o u game, anything at all). Software
can never go—where no one can consists of lists of instructions that
ever go) is the objective world. perceive t h r o u g h t h e are given to the hardware—to a
Both worlds, inside and outside, digital computer. Each instruction
w i n d o w of m i n d
are real. specifies one picayune operation
The ever astonishing Rainer (where you can on the numbers stored inside the
Maria Rilke captured this truth computer. For example: Add two
vividly in the opening lines of his never g o — w h e r e no numbers. Move a number from
eighth Duino Elegy, as translated by one place to another. Look at some
Stephen Mitchell: "With all its eyes o n e c a n ever g o ) number and do this if it's 0.
the natural world looks out/into Large lists of tiny instruc-
is t h e objective world.
the Open. Only our eyes are turned tions become complex mathemati-
backward....We know what is re- B o t h worlds, inside cal operations, and large bunches
ally out there only from/the ani- of those become even more so-
mal's gaze." We can never forget or a n d outside, are real. phisticated operations. And pretty
disregard the room we are locked soon your application is sending
into forever. spacemen hurtling across your
screen firing lasers at your avatar
THE BRAIN AS COMPUTER. The dominant, main- as you pelt the aliens with tennis balls and chat with
stream view of mind nowadays among philosophers your friends in Idaho or Algiers while sending notes to
and many scientists is computationalism, also known your girlfriend and keeping an eye on the comic-book
as cognitivism. This view is inspired by the idea that news. You are swimming happily within the rich coral
minds are to brains as software is to computers. "Think reef of your software "environment," and tfce tiny in-
of the brain," writes Daniel Dennett of Tufts University structions out of which the whole thing is built don't
in his influential 1991 Consciousness Explained, "as a matter to you at all. You don't know them, can't see
computer." In some ways this is an apt analogy. In oth- them, are wholly unaware of them.
ers, it is crazy. At any rate, it is one of the intellectual The gorgeously varied reefs called software are
milestones of modern times. a topic of their own—just as the mind is. Software and
How did this "master analogy" become so influ- computers are two different topics, just as the psy-
ential? chological or phenomenal study of mind is different
Consider the mind. The mind has its own struc- from brain physiology^ Even so, software cannot-ex-
ture and laws: It has desires, emotions, imagination; ist without digital computers, just as minds cannot
it is conscious. But no mind can exist apart from the exist without brains.
Commentary 21
of being. And emotions are central to your mental life us, far more accurately than any scientist, what things
and can shape your behavior by allowing you to com- are like inside the sealed room of the mind. When sub-
pare alternatives to determine which feels best. Jane jective humanism is recognized (under some name or
Austen, Persuasion: "He walked to the window to rec- other) as a school of thought in its own right, one of
ollect himself, and feel how he ought to behave." Henry its characteristics will be looking to great authors for
James, The Ambassadors: The heroine tells the hero, information about what the inside of the mind is like.
"no one feels so much as you. No—not any one." She To say the same thing differently: Computers
means that no one is so precise, penetrating, and sym- are information machines. They transform one batch
pathetic an observer. of information into another. Computationalists often
Computationalists cannot account for emotion. describe the mind as an "information processor." But
It fits as badly as consciousness into the mind-as-soft- feelings are not information! Feelings are states of be-
ware scheme. ing. A feeling (mild wistfulness, say, on a warm sum-
mer morning) has, ordinarily, no information content
THE BODY AND THE MIND. And there is (at at all. Wistful is simply a way to be.
least) one more area of special vulnerability in the com- Let's be more precise: We are conscious, and
putationalist worldview. Computationalists believe consciousness has two aspects. To be conscious of a
that the mind is embodied by the brain, and the brain is thing is to be aware of it (know about it, have informa-
simply an organic computer. But in fact, the mind is em- tion about it) and to experience it. Taste sweetness; see
bodied not by the brain but by the brain and the body, turquoise; hear an unresolved dissonance—each feels
intimately interleaved. Emotions are mental states one a certain way. To experience is to be some way, not to
feels physically; thus they are states of mind and body do some thing.
simultaneously. (Angry, happy, awestruck, relieved— The whole subjective field of emotions, feelings,
these are physical as well as mental states.) Sensations and consciousness fits poorly with the ideology of com-
are simultaneously mental and physical phenomena. putationalism, and with the project of increasing "the
Wordsworth writes about his memories of the River plausibility of the hypothesis that we are machines."
Wye: "I have owed to them/In hours of weariness, Thomas Nagel: "All these theories seem insuffi-
sensations sweet,/Felt in the blood, and felt along the cient as analyses of the mental because they leave out
heart / And passing even into my purer mind..." something essential!' (My italics.) Namely? "The first-per-
Where does the physical end and the mental be- son, inner point of view of the conscious subject: for ex-
gin? The resonance between mental and bodily states is ample, the way sugar tastes to you or the way red looks or
a subtle but important aspect of mind. Bodily sensations anger feels." All other mental states (not just sensations)
bring about mental states that cause those sensations to are left out, too: beliefs and desires, pleasures and pains,
change and, in turn, the mental states to develop further. whims, suspicions, longings, vague anxieties; the mental
You are embarrassed, and blush; feeling yourself blush, sights, sounds, and emotions that accompany your read-
your embarrassment increases. Your blush deepens. "A ing a novel or listening to music or daydreaming.
smile of pleasure lit his face. Conscious of that smile, pie]
shook his head disapprovingly at his own state." (Tol- FUNGTIONALISM. How could such important
stoy.) As Dmitry Merezhkovsky writes brilliantly in his things be left out? Because functionalism is today's
classic Tolstoy study, "Certain feelings impel us to cor- dominant view among theorists of the mind, and func-
responding movements, and, on the other hand, certain tionalism leaves them out. It leaves these dirty boots
habitual movements impel to the corresponding mental on science's back porch. Functionalism asks, "What
states....Tolstoy, with inimitable art, uses this convert- does it mean to be, for example, thirsty?" The answer:
ible connection between the internal and the external." Certain events (heat, hard work, not drinking) cause
All such mental phenomena depend on some- the state of mind called thirst. This state of mind,
thing like a brain and something like a body, or an ac- together with others, makes you want to do certain
curate reproduction or simulation of certain aspects of things Qike take a drink). Now you understand what
the body. However hard or easy you rate the problem "I am thirsty" means. The mental (the state of thirst)
of building such a reproduction, computing has no has not been written out of the script, but it has been
wisdom to offer regarding the construction of human- reduced to the merely physical and observable: to the
like bodies—even supposing that it knows something weather, and what you've been doing, and what ac-
about human-like minds. tions (take a drink) you plan to do.
I cite Keats or Rilke, Wordsworth, Tolstoy, Jane But this explanation is no good, because "thirst"
Austen because these "subjective humanists" can tell means, above all, that you feel thirsty. It is a way of
Commentary 23
and humans behave the same way THE IRON ROD. Innerbook,4&-
all the time, one group would be sence of Mind, the novelist and es-
just as able to survive as the other. sayist Marilynne Robinson writes
So why would nature have taken that the basic assumption in every
the trouble to invent an elaborate variant of "modern thought" is that
thing like consciousness, when it "the experience and testimony of
could have got off without it just the individual mind is to be ex-
as well? plained away, excluded from con-
Such questions have led the A w o r l d t h a t is sideration." She tells an anecdote
Australian philosopher of mind about an anecdote. Several neuro-
i n t i m i d a t e d by s c i e n c e
David Chalmers to argue that con- biologists have written about an
sciousness doesn't "follow logical- a n d bored sick American railway worker named
ly" from the design of the universe Phineas Gage. In 1848, when he
as we know it scientifically. Noth- w i t h cynical, e m p t y was 25, an explosion drove an iron
ing stops us from imagining a rod right through his brain and out
universe exactly like ours in every 'postmodernism' the other side. His jaw was shat-
respect except that consciousness tered and he lost an eye; but he
desperately needs recovered and returned to work,
does not exist.
Nagel believes that "our behaving just as he always had—
anewsubjectivist,
mental lives, including our sub- except that now he had occasional
jective experiences" are "strong- h u m a n i s t , i n d i v i d u a l i s t rude outbursts of swearing and
ly connected with and proba- blaspheming, which (evidently) he
bly strictly dependent on physical worldview. W e need had never had before.
events in our brains." But—and Neurobiologists want to
s c i e n c e a n d scholarship
this is the key to understanding show that particular personal-
why his book posed such a dan- a n d art a n d spiritual life ity traits (such as good manners)
ger to the conventional wisdom in emerge from particular regions of
his field—Nagel also believes that t o b e fully h u m a n . the brain. If a region is destroyed,
explaining subjectivity and our the corresponding piece of per-
conscious mental lives will take T h e last t h r e e are sonality is destroyed. Your mind
nothing less than a new scientific is thus the mere product of your
revolution. Ultimately, "conscious withering, and almost
genes and your brain. You have
subjects and their mental, lives" no one understands nothing to do with it, because
are "not describable by the physi- there is no subjective, individual
cal sciences." He awaits "major t h e first. you. "You" are what you say and
scientific advances," "the creation do. Your inner mental world either
of new concepts" before we can doesn't exist or doesn't matter. In
understand how consciousness fact you might be a zombie; that
works. Physics and biology as we understand them to- wouldn't matter either.
day don't seem to have the answers. Robinson asks: But what about the actual man
On consciousness and subjectivity, science still Gage? The neurobiologists say nothing about the fact
has elementary work to do. That work will be done cor- that "Gage was suddenly disfigured and half blind, that
rectly only if researchers understand what subjectivity he suffered prolonged infections of the brain," that his
is, and why it shares the cosmos with objective reality. most serious injuries were permanent. He was 25 years
Of course the deep and difficult problem of why old and had no hope of recovery. Isn't it possible, she
consciousness exists doesn't hold for Jews and Chris- asks, that his outbursts of angry swearing meant just
tians. Just as God anchors morality, God's is the view- what they usually mean—that the man was enraged
point that knows you are conscious. Knows and cares: and suffering? When the brain scientists tell this story,
Good and evil, sanctity and sin, right and wrong pre- writes Robinson, "there is no sense at all that [Gage]
suppose consciousness. When free will is understood, was a human being who thought and felt, a man with a
at last, as an aspect of emotion and not behavior—we singular and terrible fate."
are free just insofar as we feel free—it will also be seen Man is only a computer if you ignore everything
to depend on consciousness. that distinguishes him from a computer.
Commentary 25