Most Popular Theories of Consciousness Are Worse Than Wrong
If you bundle enough information into a computer, creating a big enough connected mass of data, it’ll wake up and start to act conscious, like Skynet.
.. And yet it doesn’t actually explain anything. What exactly is the mechanism that leads from integrated information in the brain to a person who ups and claims, “Hey, I have a conscious experience of all that integrated information!” There isn’t one.
.. This type of thinking leads straight to a mystical theory called panpsychism, the claim that everything in the universe is conscious, each in its own way, since everything contains at least some information. Rocks, trees, rivers, stars.
.. Consciousness has a specific, practical impact on brain function. If you want to understand how the brain works, you need to understand that part of the machine.
.. The explanation is sound enough that in principle, one could build the machine. Give it fifty years, and I think we’ll get there. Computer scientists already know how to construct a computing device that takes in information, that constructs models or simulations, and that draws on those simulations to arrive at conclusions and guide behavior.