Masataka Watanabe - From Biological to Artificial Consciousness : Neuroscientific Insights and Progress

The books in this collection are devoted to challenging and open problems at the forefront of modern science and scholarship, including related philosophical debates. In contrast to typical research monographs, however, they strive to present their topics in a manner accessible also to scientifically literate non-specialists wishing to gain insight into the deeper implications and fascinating questions involved. Taken as a whole, the series reflects the need for a fundamental and interdisciplinary approach to modern science and research. Furthermore, it is intended to encourage active academics in all fields to ponder over important and perhaps controversial issues beyond their own speciality. Extending from quantum physics and relativity to entropy, consciousness, language and complex systemsthe Frontiers Collection will inspire readers to push back the frontiers of their own knowledge.

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Translation from the Japanese language edition: Nou no ishiki, kikai no ishiki (Brain Consciousness, Machine Consciousness) by Masataka Watanabe, Chuou-kouron-shinsha 2017. Published by Chuou-kouron-shinsha . All Rights Reserved.

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Were it possible, would you upload your consciousness to a machine? What if you were soon to die otherwise? The fleeting nature of life is part of what makes it precious, but I would doubtless succumb to curiosity. If I were transplanted into a machine, what would I hear? What would I see? As time passed, would I cease to long for my previous physical form?

I believe that at some point in the future, we humans will inevitably learn how to transfer consciousness and extend our lives in some mechanical form. Today, however, realization of such a feat remains a far-off dreamwe have no idea what kind of device could harbor consciousness, or indeed what consciousness even is. The science of consciousness lacks uniformity, instead remaining a confusing amalgam of varied positions. In recent years, however, a concerted effort has begun to emerge among a subset of consciousness researchers. Through their work, the vague outline of a new science of consciousness is coming into focus, revealing new paths toward a solution. The present book is an exploration of these efforts.

Simply stated, this subset of researchersamong whom I count myselfis attempting to introduce natural laws into the science of consciousness. As the term implies, natural laws refer to the rules by nature behaves and form the foundations of the natural world. One example is the constancy of light velocity which serves as a foundation for Einsteins theory of special relativity. Einsteins theory has revealed many strange phenomena, such as that traveling at the speed of light would stop time. It is highly probable that a phenomenon as strange as consciousness, which escapes explanation by conventional science, also arises from some set of novel universal principles.

What would such a natural law look like? To give two examples, the philosopher David Chalmers posits that all information produces consciousness, while the neuroscientist Giulio Tononi presumes that consciousness can only arise from information in a particular integrated state. I address the meaning and unique characteristics of each hypothesis in detail in the main text.

Initiatives toward introducing a natural law of consciousness aim at recasting the science of consciousness into the form that science should take. Namely, a science of consciousness should propose hypotheses based on natural laws and elucidate the nature of its subject through reproducible experiments that test those hypotheses. Doing so would finally lay bare the nature of consciousness, which for thousands of years has straddled the boundary between philosophy and science.

My own field of study is neuroscience, and I have been obsessed with consciousness for some time, just as in the words of the philosopher John Searle, Studying the brain without studying consciousness would be like studying the stomach without studying digestion. Every day, I conduct experiments on the brains of mice, during which I constantly ponder the neural mechanisms of consciousness. And there is one thing my experience allows me to say with confidence: Throughout all of science, no subject is both so deep and so elusive as this one.

My primary goal in writing this book is to impart upon the reader the depth of this problem of consciousness. I wish to demonstrate that we need not travel to the farthest reaches of space to find problems deserving of our utmost efforts toward understanding: Such a problem resides right in our own heads. A secondary goal is to propose a method for validating the natural law of consciousness, which is indispensable to the establishment of the current approach but yet missing.