Our Reality And Why Consciousness Is Important

Our Reality And Why Consciousness Is Important

Jun Wu

Dr. Zubin Damania’s interview with Professor Hoffman is an indepth look at the world described in his book and sets the background for this interview.

In your book, you talk about conscious agents, why are these conscious agents important? 

Even without consciousness, from a functional point of view, you can get really high levels of intelligence. My concern with conscious agents is not so much in relation to intelligence. I am examining simple issues such as our conscious experience of the smell of chocolate, or the taste of garlic.
How can we as scientists develop an agent-based system that actually accounts for simple conscious experiences that even a rat might have? I’m not talking about advanced human intelligence or self-awareness. I’m just concerned with very low-level sensory experience. Agent-based models with unconscious agents may create unlimited intelligence, but they have so far failed to explain the genesis of something as simple as the conscious experience of the taste of chocolate. This is a big problem.

In my theory, I’m looking at simple conscious agents. I’m looking at how these conscious agents can interact functionally. Within this framework, specific interesting functional interactions can lead to new specific kinds of conscious experiences: there’s an infinite range of possible functional interactions that may lead to new kinds of higher levels of consciousness. So, this is a huge field to explore for the next generation of scientists. Human consciousness is just a tiny aspect of it. We are not the end all and be all.

We may need sophisticated AI to help us go where our imagination may otherwise fail to go. They may even develop concepts that we can’t understand. A good theory of consciousness that defines exactly what we mean by conscious agents will tell us when new conscious agents emerge. For instance, a dynamical system of conscious agents that satisfies the definition of a conscious agent would constitute a new conscious agent.

Here's an interview with Donald Hoffman entitled "Is there an Infinite Mind?" in Adrian Nelson's Waking Cosmos podcast series: