Don’t publish this guy anymore. Akilesh is right, his approach is to dismiss more rigorous inquiries out of hand without showing any familiarity with the concepts he’s rejecting. The thought experiments he proposes illuminate nothing because he does not correctly follow their implications.
Hot Tub Harry’s consciousness was nothing more than his active observation of both his environment and his cognitive activities while his brain was immersed in a nutrient bath and connected to a sense organ.
This is a poor definition of consciousness as it does nothing to describe what is mechanistically responsible for consciousness, it draws an arbitrary distinction between “cognitive activities” and consciousness, and it provides no framework to classify other systems as conscious or not.
What is particularly frustrating is his disdain for the underlying neuroscience while asserting that his arguments are infallible. In doing so, he entirely misses what is interesting about the subject: computational strategies of neural systems. He mentions neurons only once in this piece. How neurons form the basis of behavior is an interesting question, but Rob refuses to even acknowledge it and writes as if neurons have no relationship to behavior at all. Robbie would rather talk about a girl watching a guy take a hot bath.
And really, this is an utterly useless example. Of course anyone can imagine a thing without skin or guts having thoughts. This is not an interesting line of thought and it does nothing to help define consciousness or experience. The distinction between Henry in the bath and the woman watching him only draws attention to the fact that the brain is responsible for consciousness, but rob doesn’t notice.
We know a lot about brains and very little about what they are doing and why they do it this way. That is why non-science discussions on the nature of consciousness are so important; this is not something that can be answered with science right now. With well-structured reasoning, we can arrive at good definitions and expectations for these concepts. We cannot, however, say anything about what is physically responsible for consciousness. Rob says he is doing that, and he is incorrect.
In his other piece “your brain is not a computer”, his thesis is essentially to insist that, whatever brains are doing, it does not count as computation. Which is just stupid. Computation has always been about strategies to achieve a goal in generalized scenarios. It does not mean computers or computer algorithms. Computers are one way to solve problems. Brains are another way. Saying that a computer “literally processes information” while the brain does not is to assert a limited definition of information, but Rob doesn’t notice.
He talks to scientists, but does not listen to them. His arguments in their formulation demand a rigorous approach to answer them, but Rob is not interested in learning that approach when he can make something up instead.
This is not the kind of writing that has a place at the awl. He is “be more stupid”. You guys are all better than him, he makes your site worse.
