God Soul Mind Brain

contribute to its conscious experience. But again, it will never answer any questions about consciousness. If you ask it, it won’t compute the question and won’t give you an answer.

    Only the most complex circuits in her brain, the ones that are built to compute abstract concepts, can report on their qualia. In this speculation, every part of her brain is conscious, different parts are conscious of different qualia, but only one part reports on its consciousness.

    This speculation disposes of the question of qualia neatly and simply. Of course Betsy reports having qualia. Why? Because certain brain circuits are able to report on the question, and all brain circuits experience qualia. (One feels a satisfied quale here. On casual inspection the logic feels sound.)

    However, this speculation does have certain nagging problems. The biggest problem is that it doesn’t actually explain anything. It doesn’t explain why any circuits in the brain have qualia. It merely asserts that they do. It is like when a child says, “Hey Dad, how does that bird stay up in the air when it flies?” and Dad, somewhat deficient in his knowledge of aerodynamics, says, “Well, Son, all birds do that when they fly.” Thanks, Pop. That sure clears it up.

    In particular, Speculation 1 does not explain how brains are able to physically report being conscious. Even if we accept the speculation that all information processing comes with awareness, like a heat emanating from it, or like an aura around it, how does the machine find out about the aura? In the end, speech is controlled by neuronal machinery. Neurons activate the muscles of the tongue and mouth. Therefore, in order for us to report being conscious, the aura of consciousness can’t simply hang out in the ether, secreted by our information processing. It must have a direct physical impact on the machine itself. Speculation 1 does not explain how.

Speculation 2: Awareness is a type of modeling clay

    What is awareness? It is tempting to take it as a primitive, irreducible concept. We all know what it is intuitively. But when everyone has an intuitive notion of what X means, that’s a tip-off that X must be an idiosyncratic property specially built into our brains. It wouldn’t seem obvious if we didn’t have the special-purpose circuitry for it. In Speculation 2, awareness, and the need of our brains to compute it, is a consequence of our social construction.

    Imagine two people, John and Betsy. In front of them is a cup of coffee. When John looks at the coffee, the visual input sets off a cascade of neural processes. Signals travel through his brain. The circuits involved are many and diverse, some overlapping, some distinct from each other. The complexity is so great that visual scientists are still unable to map it out in its entirety. Some of that flow of information may result in action: salivation, dilation of pupils, leaning forward, smiling.

    Betsy computes the direction of John’s gaze and calculates that he is looking at the coffee. Based on that and other information, her perceptual machinery constructs a model of John. The model is a simplification, a proxy for the real thing, nowhere near the complexity of John’s actual brain processes. In the model, John is aware of the coffee. (Betsy, of course, also models her own brain, and that model also has attached to it the property of “awareness of coffee cup.”)

    Here “awareness” is like “redness.” It is a construct of Betsy’s brain. “Redness” is a fabrication, a proxy for a complex pattern of wavelengths and contrasts across the visual field. “Awareness” is a fabrication, a simplification, a proxy for a cascade of neural processes that are far too complex and too hidden to be modeled with any accuracy or detail. Both “redness” and “awareness” are used to model the real world in a simplified and useful way.

    In this perspective, “awareness” is part of the kit used to model brains.

    A sculptor might use clay and wood and wax when fashioning a model of a person. The wax, for example, might be a proxy for human flesh. The brain system for modeling other brains has “awareness,” “intentionality,” and other mentalistic properties in its kit. These properties are proxies for much more complicated events.

    If Speculation 2 is correct, then “awareness” cannot exist without the special-purpose circuitry to compute it. Flight computers and microwaves are not aware of