Galen Strawson with Alex O'Connor
Show: Within Reason
Cleaned and reformatted from published transcript or auto-generated captions — punctuation added, filler removed, restructured for readability. Not verbatim. For exact quotes, refer to the original.
Alex O'Connor
Galen Strawson, welcome to the show.
Galen Strawson
Hello. Good to be here.
Alex O'Connor
You are a physicalist — that is to say, what some people call a naturalist. You also describe yourself as a panpsychist, or at least align yourself with these terms in relatively specific ways. I want to get into that, because I think my audience will find it interesting. But first: just before we started talking, you said the trouble with speaking about this kind of stuff is that it's just so difficult to get people to agree with you. What do you think is the unintuitive central claim — the thing that, when you start trying to explain your views, makes people switch off?
Galen Strawson
Part of it is that there are a whole set of blockers, as I see it. And one of the blockers is just the normal meaning of the word 'physical' in everyday life. People think it actually carries, as part of its meaning, the idea that the physical is not intrinsically conscious — is not, in its fundamental nature, conscious in any way at all. That's the first thing, and it's very hard to get over.
So what I do — and you must stop me at any time — is start by saying that you have to look at physics. There's this great theme I have, which I call the silence of physics. If you look at physics, it doesn't make any claims at all about the intrinsic nature of the stuff whose structure it describes with equations. So the field should be understood to be open to the idea that there might be consciousness in some form even at the very fundamental level. And there are many advantages in that view.
Alex O'Connor
This is a really important point about physics that I talk about all the time — that it essentially describes relations, but it doesn't tell you about the nature of the things which are related. And the phrase you used, being quiet, seems like it might be borrowed from a certain Bertrand Russell, who was saying the same thing: that it's not a bad thing about physics that it only describes relations between things — it doesn't tell you about the nature, what Russell called the quiddity, of the real stuff.
But sometimes when I point this out to people, they say, 'Well, so what? Physics doesn't claim to do much more than describe relations.' And if you want to say, 'Well, physics can't tell us what the nature of something is, so let's just plug consciousness in there,' it seems like a bit of a consciousness of the gaps.
Galen Strawson
Well, do you want me to give you the argument?
Alex O'Connor
Please.
Galen Strawson
Okay, step one. We've already agreed that I want to call myself — or maybe call ourselves — physicalists. Really, what I mean by that is just that I think physics has a description to give of everything in the universe. I'll call that physicalism. Second, consciousness is real. That is non-negotiable. It's evident. There are just a few crazy people who deny that consciousness is real.
So we've got physicalism is true — that's one. Two: consciousness is real. Now we have an interim conclusion: consciousness is wholly physical. It must be, because everything's physical. Now here's the most substantive step. Number four: there is no such thing as radical or strong emergence. Step five: the emergence of consciousness from the wholly immaterial, non-conscious would be a case of radical emergence. Therefore, consciousness must in some sense be right at the bottom of things — because we know it's here, we know it's physical, and you couldn't get it out of something wholly and utterly non-conscious. So it must in some way be down at the bottom of things.
Alex O'Connor
What do you mean by radical emergence?
Galen Strawson
That's not an easy question. Radical emergence would be the emergence of something out of something else, given which there was nothing about the base thing given which you could explain the rising of the emerging thing.
Alex O'Connor
So we've got this view that everything that exists can be described by physics — there's no extra stuff physics can't get a grasp on — and that consciousness exists, therefore consciousness must somehow be explicable by physics. And radical emergence: if you have a fundamental substance or its properties, and you mix that together and get a new type of stuff that just somehow magically comes out of it, we'll call that radical emergence. Some people like to say, 'I think there's just the brain, which is atoms, neurons firing, and then consciousness just emerges out of that.' And you might say emergence of that kind doesn't exist. And they point to examples — temperature: an individual atom isn't hot, but put a bunch together and you get heat. Or the wetness of water: an H2O molecule isn't wet, but water flows. What do you say to people who point to those as examples of radical emergence?
Galen Strawson
I just say they're not radical. Heat reduces to the motion of these little particles. Liquidity is a function of the molecular interaction laws — I think they call them the Van der Waals interaction laws. They all reduce smoothly and nicely to wholly physical properties to do with shape, size, motion, number, and so on. So I fear you're going to go on to ask me to say — what about life?
Alex O'Connor
I wasn't going to, but people do that to me all the time. I should put my colours to the mast and say I'm on your side here — I broadly agree with you about panpsychism. I'm just seeing an opportunity to put all the objections I keep hearing to someone like yourself.
Galen Strawson
Well, I'm going to say that, as far as I'm concerned, life reduces smoothly. It's just a matter of electrochemistry — once you bracket consciousness. People resist that already; that's another blocker. They think they've got a killer argument. When I say, 'Look, life reduces smoothly,' they protest that consciousness is a whole different order of things. But all life can ultimately be seen as the motion of particles and electrochemical goings-on. That's my position.
Alex O'Connor
Consciousness is obviously something very special — at least it seems that way. And I like to point out that in these other examples of emergence, the thing people are really interested in as having emerged actually emerges as a conscious experience. Take temperature. Temperature is just the vibration of atoms. If all you mean by temperature is the motion of atoms, then nothing has emerged when you have a big object made of vibrating atoms. But people want to say, 'There's this extra thing — when I touch it, it feels hot.' And that's what emerges, without realising that it emerges as a conscious experience. Similar to an image on a screen emerging out of a computer system. All the bits that could be said to emerge only emerge as phenomena.
Galen Strawson
Exactly. When people talk about liquidity, they're actually thinking about something about the experience of it. If they just mean the molecular make-up and motion of H2O molecules, then there's nothing you can't account for in terms of the basic physics.
Alex O'Connor
So I'm interested in the fact that you describe yourself as a physicalist, in that everything can be described by physics. Many people want to say consciousness is something physics can't account for, can't grasp. What do you mean to say that it can be described?
Galen Strawson
This is another issue. What I mean is: when you have a pain, it is — in my view, and perhaps yours too — just a certain complicated synergy of neurons and neuromodulating thingamajigs. Physics cannot describe the feeling at all, but it can describe the pain, because the pain just is that going on. That's all I mean. Physics can't give positive descriptions of the nature of the stuff at all.
So it's almost ambiguous. When I say physics can describe everything, many people misunderstand — they think I'm saying it can describe the feeling of pain. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying there is a thing called a pain, which is a neural going-on; physics has a description of that, neurophysiology has a description of that. So it falls within the ambit of physics, but physics can't describe its intrinsic, non-structural nature. It can't describe the intrinsic non-structural nature of anything.
Alex O'Connor
And this is important, because the claim isn't just that physics can't describe the nature of consciousness — it's that physics can't describe the nature of anything, including the stuff of consciousness. Which is why you've written a paper whose full title is essentially 'There is no mystery of consciousness, and the demand for explanation begs the question.' You write that as soon as you say consciousness is this special mystery, you're assuming, firstly, that non-conscious stuff exists, and secondly, that it's somehow less mysterious. For most people it does feel more mysterious that there's a conscious brain than that there's a rock on the road over there. Are you saying that's a false distinction?
Galen Strawson
No, it's extremely natural. It's based in the character of our everyday experience. But when you go into physics and philosophy, it's something you simply have to give up. When I say consciousness — bear with me — I think all animal consciousness, our consciousness, does need an explanation. But the explanation is at hand: evolution did it. Evolution needs something to work with, though, and what I think it had to work with was already some kind of primitive conscious stuff, about which I really can't say anything. That got worked up into interesting, remarkable consciousness. So that does need explanation. But the claim that the very existence of consciousness at all needs explanation does, I think, beg a question in the technical sense — it presupposes something we are not right to presuppose.
Alex O'Connor
So, to say consciousness is present all the way down — do you mean there's this stuff people call matter, and that matter is conscious, has the property of consciousness? Or that there are foundational elements of the universe, including things like spin and mass and charge, and then consciousness? Or do you think it all breaks down to consciousness, such that rather than foundational stuff having consciousness, foundational stuff is consciousness?
Galen Strawson
Yes — I think that's what economists call the least worst view. You go all out: spin, mass and charge are appearances of the intrinsic nature of consciousness. I like what Heisenberg says — that it's quite good to think of energy not just as a property, the property of being able to do work, which is how physicists think of it, but as a substance. I think it is the best completely general name for the stuff of the universe. It behaves in certain ways, but what is its intrinsic nature? The proposal is that the simplest solution to the problem of consciousness is to say it's already conscious of some kind.
But it's extremely hard. I like what a man called C. A. Strong — completely forgotten now — says: 'Just don't try and think about that.' You have to posit that it is something intrinsically already of such a nature that consciousness can emerge in a non-radical, non-magical way. People think it's metaphysically insanely extravagant to suppose there's consciousness everywhere, but there's just no good reason for thinking that. The form of the argument I gave you is what's called an inference to the best explanation. Everything's physical; here is consciousness; we could not get consciousness out of something wholly and utterly non-conscious; so we must suppose it's in some form already down there at the bottom. That's how you get there.
Alex O'Connor
This might sound like a trivial question, but considering how popular the view is: why is it impossible that radical emergence could obtain? Why not just posit that you could end up with qualities or substances that aren't products of the individual parts?
Galen Strawson
Well, there is no argument — it's just a core position. What you can say is that it isn't appealed to anywhere else in science. I don't believe in God, but if you take God to be some kind of omniscient creature, this would be unintelligible: the emergence of consciousness from the wholly and utterly non-conscious would be unintelligible even to God. There would be nothing about the wholly non-conscious stuff given which you could see how or why consciousness could come out of it. So in terms of good theories and what's theoretically extravagant or reasonable, it's terribly extravagant to posit radical emergence. All you have to do is suppose that consciousness is in some manner already down at the bottom of things.
They say that's tremendously theoretically extravagant. I say that's just prejudice, just habit. There's no intrinsic reason for thinking that, and certainly physics isn't going to give you a reason. Physics in the last century has just shown that everything is far more extraordinary than we can ever hope to begin to understand — wave–particle duality, and so on. Why think it isn't extraordinary in some way?
Alex O'Connor
I've made this point a few times recently. If I want to know what an electron is — its nature — I could ask some quantum physicists. One might say, 'It's an abstract cloud of probability whose wave function collapses when it's observed.' And everyone goes, 'Okay, interesting.' Another says, 'It's in fact in all of those different positions, and a new branch of reality is created for every possibility — trillions of multiverse realities being created every second.' And people go, 'Okay, that makes sense.' Then someone comes along and says, 'I think there might be proto-conscious properties,' and everyone goes, 'You've lost your mind — what are you talking about?'
Galen Strawson
Exactly. In fact I'm talking to a number of people about this who are very committed — they'll choose radical emergence over the other option because they can't bear to give up the idea. I could mention Steven Pinker, whom I'm going to be talking to, and Peter Godfrey-Smith, and I think Scott Aaronson, who's my colleague here — though I'm not sure about him yet.
Alex O'Connor
Why the resistance? Why are people willing to accept all kinds of brilliant, fascinating interpretations of quantum mechanics, but so resistant to the idea that what we call consciousness might be present at the foundation of reality? Do you think there's a philosophical reason, or is it just personal bias?
Galen Strawson
It's human nature. I was dragged into this too, kicking and screaming. Back in the '90s I didn't particularly want it to happen, but I couldn't see any other way. Once you're committed to physicalism and the reality of consciousness, what follows? You've either got to put consciousness somewhere at the bottom, or agree with radical emergence. And on most accounts of good theory construction, putting consciousness at the bottom is the better, simpler, most economical, elegant, parsimonious way of doing it.
Alex O'Connor
Some people approach this by saying you've got three options. One is dualism — there's mind stuff and physical stuff. One is that there's only one type of stuff and it's all material. And one is that there's only one type of stuff and it's mental. Given that you call yourself a physicalist panpsychist, I know you're a monist and don't believe in dualism, but I'm not sure how you'd characterise those last two options.
Galen Strawson
I see the problem here. You're using 'material' in a way I wouldn't, because I would just say the mental is material. So I'd list the options as: dualism — for which there has never been any good argument — and then, coming down to monism, two more positions: radical emergence, or panpsychism of some kind. You've got to choose between them.
Alex O'Connor
You've said in your paper that to experience consciousness is just to know what it is. There's an intuitive force to that — everyone knows what consciousness is, because you're experiencing it right now. But is it guaranteed that just because we experience something, we know its nature? I can experience swimming through the ocean without knowing that water is hydrogen and oxygen. Is experiencing consciousness enough to say we know what it is, especially if, when asked, we struggle to put it into words?
Galen Strawson
I'd say it's a special case: the having of it is the knowing of it. But I don't think we know everything there is to know about a conscious experience, because I also think there's a lot of neural stuff going on, and none of that is given to me in the having of the feeling of pain, or the taste of garlic. So it's only partial. I'm just saying there is something we know entirely as it is, just in having it. And here we know something about reality as it is in itself. There's a classic argument: try to think that your current experience could be an appearance — well, the having of the appearance-experience is already a case of an experience. This is the great argument against the deniers of the existence of consciousness, the people who now call themselves illusionists. It's just hopeless — because the illusion is already an experience.
Alex O'Connor
You've said, semi-famously, that what they call illusionism or eliminative materialism is not just the worst idea in philosophy, but perhaps the worst idea any person has ever come up with in the history of mankind.
Galen Strawson
Well, I think it's the silliest. But a good philosopher called Uriah Kriegel said he could think of one that was at least equally silly — that nothing exists. So I had to groan.
Alex O'Connor
It's always interesting to think where listeners will be. They'll either be right along with us, saying this makes loads of sense, or still thinking, 'Hold on — conscious electrons? It feels like we brushed over that.' I asked you why people struggle to get on board, and my best guess is they're thinking about consciousness wrong. The biggest mistake is that people think consciousness requires complexity — because when they go looking for it, they go looking for particular kinds of conscious activity: memory, emotion, the ability to feel pain. But you could be conscious without any of those. Consciousness is just experience. Strip away all the complicated things consciousness can do, and you're left with something very simple — and if it's something simple, it's easier to attribute to an electron.
Galen Strawson
Yes. The first thing I'd say is that I don't really believe in electrons in that kind of way. I think you have to accept the field-theory approach: they're just patterns of excitations in fields. When I've given talks, someone says, 'What's it like to be an electron?' I understand why, but we don't have that. The second point: one has to think of it as something very primitive. I like to say the existence of complicated consciousness like ours — or the eagle's eye — is just like the existence of the opposable thumb. An extraordinary piece of engineering produces the opposable thumb, or the eye considered as a physical object. It's no more remarkable that extremely complicated consciousness has evolved than that opposable thumbs have.
Alex O'Connor
To be clear, do you think there is something it is like to be an electron or a quark?
Galen Strawson
I don't think there are electrons, really. I think they're fields. We're now approaching another difficult area, because I think one has to think that there is, as it were, a consciousness field. This attracts some people, because we're heading in the direction of a great big cosmic mind of some sort — well, maybe, but not in any sense that has any religious implication.
Alex O'Connor
The way you describe it — electrons as excitations in a field — a lot of quantum physicists want to talk in terms of the wave function of the universe: one great big wave function, and all physical matter just an excitation in that field. And that sounds like it lends itself to something. In the same way it's hard to imagine how you get matter out of experience, or how experience takes up space, the physicists say everything is foundationally waves — and you could ask how waves take up space. But if you start talking about one great big wave function and excitations in it, the image I get is not of panpsychism but of idealism: rather than lots of tiny instantiations of consciousness that you put together, one big consciousness out of which you divvy up smaller parts.
Galen Strawson
I'm afraid this sounds like a great muddle and misunderstanding that's been introduced into the debate by Bernardo Kastrup. No one should ever so disfigure panpsychism as to make it a view that they've got a lot to live by. If panpsychism is a form of idealism — absolutely, no question. To me, strong versions of idealism are equally forms of psychism. I've actually dropped the 'pan' now; I just like to say psychism. So to set up an opposition between idealism and panpsychism is just a mistake.
Alex O'Connor
Then what is unique about panpsychism, as opposed to the long history of idealism, if not that it's atomistic?
Galen Strawson
Absolutely not — that's no necessary part of it. Idealism is usually associated with Berkeley, and that is an utterly different view: that there is a mind, and all the objects in the world are just ideas in that mind. My panpsychism has nothing to do with little atoms or little subjects.
Alex O'Connor
You were about to say your panpsychism is not like Berkeley's.
Galen Strawson
Yes. For me, the world is really out there — solid stuff. Though I say 'solid' and that triggers the wrong idea; solidity is just electric charge. Objects are, as we inaccurately say, almost empty space. It's all extraordinarily diaphanous. For Berkeley, physical objects are ideas in a great big mind. But I say it's real, concrete stuff out there. You can bring them together — you can form a conception of the story that begins to look like the story of a real universe out there, a field with all these characteristics.
Alex O'Connor
Maybe I can ask it this way. If you want to say the universe is made out of consciousness, that consciousness is somehow foundational, you can go in two directions. You can dig down to the bottom and say whatever's down there is conscious — that's panpsychism. Or you can go upwards and say everything put together is one great big mind — and that's idealism. Do we account for the cake in terms of its crumbs, or the crumbs in terms of the cake?
Galen Strawson
I reject the choice. Berkeley, by definition, is an immaterialist — it's as if there's no real substance out there, no universe out there. To say everything is just ideas in minds is naturally thought of as saying they're not really real at all, and that's completely wrong. There is a universe; it's out there; it is a field. And that's one of the things I wanted to say: physicists say there are certain fields — sometimes 17, sometimes 25, though some are just mathematical. But I don't think we should think there are 15 stuffy fields. I think there's just one, extraordinarily complex, and we access it with all these sets of descriptions that have nice equations. Maybe that's shocking to people who think there's the electromagnetic field, the gravitational field, and so on. There's just one.
Alex O'Connor
Even if we accept that consciousness goes all the way down, that everything's made out of consciousness — there's definitely something which I have, and a dog has, that a table or a rock doesn't. I wanted to ask you straightforwardly: what is that thing that I have that they don't?
Galen Strawson
It's just that some collocations, some clumpings of matter — and I say matter because I don't think matter means non-conscious; the matter is energy, and the fundamental nature of energy is what-it's-likeness — some clumpings give rise to a large subject, but obviously tables don't. Of course you get teased when you put forward panpsychism: 'Oh, you think the tile is conscious.' Don't think that for a moment. I'm sure it takes certain sorts of very complicated electrochemical interactions to get large-scale consciousness.
Some people go back to the little-bits picture and say — which I'll accept for the sake of argument — you can't think that lots of little bits can clump together and not make something conscious. And I say: well, what about a football team? When a football team goes into a huddle, there are eleven subjects of consciousness, but they don't suddenly make a big single one, unless you're a bit mystical about team spirit. So it's not the case that if you think the fundamental stuff is conscious, you have to think every clumping of it is conscious. It takes some very complicated electrochemistry for that to happen. I see no difficulty there.
Alex O'Connor
You're quite right — just because everything's made of consciousness doesn't mean every object made of consciousness is itself conscious, has a higher-level consciousness of its own. But why do some things, like brains, get that and others don't? Is it just a matter of complexity? And do you believe in individualised selves, centres of consciousness?
Galen Strawson
I think I answered that — it's because you get this electrochemical complexity. I don't have much more to say. Perhaps you could tell me what you think of the term 'self' and how it's best used in philosophy.
Alex O'Connor
Self — wow, that's a big one.
Galen Strawson
I sometimes sympathise with a man called Eric Olson, who thinks we shouldn't use it at all. Are you asking me to get into some of my more particular views about the self, which aren't related to this issue?
Alex O'Connor
I'd be interested, in so far as it can help people get a bigger picture — especially if this is their first introduction to panpsychism. The first question that comes to mind is: if there's all this consciousness everywhere, then what is this sort of conscious gravity I feel inside myself, this sense that there's a 'me' it's all happening to? Stepping outside that can allow people to see consciousness everywhere, rather than just in their own heads.
Galen Strawson
It's what you'd expect, given that evolution has come up with complicated conscious organisms that move around on their own. They need a place where the incoming data about the environment gets unified, and that is what our experience of self is. We are indeed a locus — Latin for a place. We are local places of consciousness. That's just a fact, and it's the foundation of all the experience of self. And funnily enough, here I rather favour some of the things Dan Dennett has said — although I disagree with him about many things — that the sense of self is in some sense a construct, extraordinarily useful in helping us organise our experience. But there's a very solid foundation for the idea that you are a single subject of experience: you are a single body, and you move around as a single body.
Alex O'Connor
It's interesting to hear you refer to Dennett, because he's one of these illusionists you'd find so difficult to agree with. Would you agree with him as an illusionist about the self, just not about consciousness?
Galen Strawson
Yes — though I'm not denying that one really is a single subject of experience. There is a continuing brain. I don't think there's a thing called a self that's a continuing thing independently of the existence of the brain.
Alex O'Connor
No, I agree with that.
Alex O'Connor
The second claim in your paper's title is that thinking we need to explain consciousness begs an important question. Perhaps you can clarify precisely what you're getting at.
Galen Strawson
I don't think you can use 'begs the question' any more without care, because I meant it in the original strict sense. The challenge is this: why do you think the existence of consciousness needs explanation in a way that the existence of matter — thought of as non-conscious — doesn't? If you think that, you've already made a move, begged the question in an unwarranted way. There is a great big mystery, and it's this: why is there something rather than nothing? That we really don't know. But given that there is something, we shouldn't think we know it was originally wholly non-conscious. If you somehow knew that everything was in its fundamental nature non-conscious, then the arising of consciousness would be a mystery. But you've already blocked out what I think is the correct view by assuming the basic stuff was wholly and utterly non-conscious.
Alex O'Connor
And it's terribly natural to think that. I wonder if you'd find some agreement with Bernardo Kastrup that the influence of the scientific revolution — the idea that everything is best described with mathematics, this mechanisation of the universe — is part of the reason people now consider it not to be begging the question, that there's some extra task when it comes to consciousness.
Galen Strawson
I think that's a fairly plausible sociological hypothesis. Having said that, we shouldn't forget that these descriptions work. They're correct, they're true — the inverse-square laws, E=MC², all that. But yes, they may have misset our thinking. That said, psychism is always alive in the Western tradition to an extraordinary extent.
Alex O'Connor
It's surprising how often it shows up. When I first started learning about this, I was amazed at the list of names — all the way back to Thales, our pre-Socratic founder of philosophy, with his idea that all things are full of gods, and his obsession with magnets that seemed to have minds of their own. All the way to the modern day: Bertrand Russell and his monism, and now people such as yourself and Philip Goff and Thomas Nagel. It's been there the whole time. But it's the most polarising of all the philosophical views I've entertained. Half my audience think I've lost my mind when I talk about consciousness as fundamental reality, and half think it's really interesting — more so than free will or God's existence or objective morality.
Galen Strawson
Yes, it does rile people up — just because of habit and assumption. There are some great quotations about how unbearable people find radically new views. I do want to interpolate that you mentioned Russell, but Eddington was even better in a way on all this — a shout-out to Arthur Eddington. And there's a very good book called Panpsychism in the West by David Skrbina, which is very good just for showing you how many people have held this view.
Alex O'Connor
People often ask: do you think the study of human consciousness is a scientific question or a philosophical one? To give an idea of where you're coming from — do you think the biggest revolutions in thought are going to come from the physics department or the philosophy department?
Galen Strawson
I don't think we're ever going to get any further with consciousness — even if we really nail down the neural correlates, even if the neuroscientists get that completely taped — because neuroscience and physics can't tell us substantive stuff about the intrinsic nature of the things whose structure they describe. So in the study of consciousness, well — why not read Proust, or Henry James, or William James?
One of the things that's interesting is that a hundred years ago exactly the same sort of debate was going on about so-called vitalism: how is life possible? We did that — vitalism reduced to complicated physical goings-on, electrochemistry. But there's nothing that can happen like that with consciousness. So I don't think it's going to change at all.
And perhaps I should say something here. I'm dreading the amount of slop that's going to be generated in the next two or three decades — by both machines and humans — about consciousness. Some people associate the word consciousness with intelligence, and they think that when a large language model gets smart enough, it must be getting conscious. I think that's just a complete mistake. The best way to use the word is simply to mean the what-it's-likeness, the feeling. There is no necessary connection between that and intelligence. You've already made the point that the foetus in the womb has feeling but not yet intelligence — so there's a dissociation that way around, consciousness without intelligence. And equally, you can have intelligence without consciousness at any level. So at no point, as LLMs get more and more indistinguishable from human beings in their intelligence, will there be any good reason to think they're conscious.
Alex O'Connor
Do you think that's in principle something that couldn't occur? Anil Seth, a neuroscientist friend of mine, just wrote a paper on the mythology of conscious AI, where he says the analogies drawn between brain functions and computer functions are just insufficient. What are your intuitions on conscious AI?
Galen Strawson
I agree with you about that. I'm just afraid the debate's going to go on and on. Some people are going to be committed to the idea that when it gets sufficiently intelligent, we must treat it as conscious. On the in-principle point: I don't think it's in principle impossible for a metal-and-silicon thingamajig to be conscious. I don't want to rule that out — how could I, since I already think the very stuff of reality is somehow consciousness-involving? I just don't believe that any of the complex puttings-together of things you'll get with machines will ever deliver what we need.
Alex O'Connor
Anil talks about a particular kind of neuron that responds to metabolism. So if you were to replicate a brain with silicon, because there are neurons which rely on metabolism, you'd also have to replicate metabolism — which isn't something silicon can really do. The more accurately you recreate the human brain, the more you'd actually just be making a human brain.
Galen Strawson
Exactly. The difficulty is that people talk about structural isomorphism — if you can make a thing with the same structure as the human brain, you should get consciousness. But structure goes all the way down. Even if you got something computationally structured the same way, the actual biological stuff — the wetware — is also a matter of structure. The only way to get a complete structural duplication would be to have a baby, basically — to build another human being. There are a lot of mistakes being made when people say, 'If it's structured the same, it's going to be conscious,' because it's never going to be anywhere near structurally the same.
Alex O'Connor
If you look at what a neuron's made out of and try to recreate it with other material — how far do you dig down? If you were to take a bunch of protons and electrons and recreate a neuron, you wouldn't be creating a simulation of a neuron anymore. You'd just be creating a neuron. And if that's what you had to do to fully recreate consciousness, then maybe you do just need the biological aspect.
Galen Strawson
It's ultimately an empirical hypothesis, and I'd bet that was right. I've been corresponding with Anil for some time, and I think he was further away from me when we started than he is now. We're certainly converging to a considerable extent.
Alex O'Connor
I try to go back and forth — having panpsychists and idealists on, and then people like Anil, and I had Sean Carroll on to talk about emergence being real and non-psychic physicalism. But whatever the case, I'm hoping people have found my conversation with you today interesting, if not informative. Some people just don't want to hear it, and fair enough — maybe they're right, maybe we're crazy. But at the very least, I hope it's given them something to chew on. Galen Strawson, thank you so much for your time today.
Galen Strawson
Okay. Thanks.