photo caption,
Philosopher David Chalmers (left) and neuroscientist Christof Koch
Article informationAuthor, RedaçãoRole, BBC News Mundo
2 hours ago
Two men made a bet, 25 years ago, that could very well have been that “I bet that…”, spoken in casual conversation, without repercussions.
But we are talking about two renowned figures in their fields: the Australian philosopher David Chalmers and the German-American neuroscientist Christof Koch.
The challenge was about one of the intriguing subjects of existence: consciousness.
Koch and Chalmers agreed to set up a series of studies with collaborating researchers to test ideas about how the brain generates consciousness.
Everything depended on finding something that was defined as “the neural correlates of consciousness”.
It sounds very complicated, but Koch explained the concept poetically in an interview with the Swedish scientific journal Forskning & Framsteg: “They are the footprints of consciousness left in the organ of consciousness, which is the brain.”
What they want to find out, he added, is “which parts of the brain are needed to carry out a conscious experience”, which would help to finally understand how consciousness is achieved.
Two and a half decades later, the philosopher and scientist met at the 26th annual meeting of the Association for Scientific Studies of Consciousness, held recently at New York University (USA).
And it was then that he declared himself the undisputed winner of the bet.
David Chalmers and Christof Koch spoke to James Copnall of BBC World Service’s Newsday programme. The presenter started by asking the duo how it all started. Check out the questions and answers:
Chalmers – It was in 1998, at a conference in Bremen, Germany, on the neural correlates of consciousness, the idea that certain areas of the brain could be directly associated with consciousness.
Christof (Koch) was very excited about this idea and bet that in 25 years we would have identified the areas of the brain that are linked to consciousness. I thought that was a bit optimistic so I bet it wasn’t.
Newsday – Christof, what were you thinking? Why were you so optimistic?
Koch – Because together with Francis Crick, the British molecular biologist who discovered the helical structure of the hereditary DNA molecule, we had thought of an empirical program in 1990 that, in order to move away from the philosophical debates about consciousness and the nature of reality and mind and of the soul, all of that, we would focus on the marks that consciousness leaves on the brain.
We know that the brain is the organ of consciousness, not the heart.
We know that it doesn’t involve the whole brain, just parts of it: you can lose parts of the cerebellum or the spinal cord, for example, but still be conscious.
With arguments like that, we thought of an empirical program for making empirical progress: a program that was self-contained, in which it didn’t matter what particular philosophical conviction you were of. Idealistic [conceito em que só vidas biológicas têm consciência] or panpsychist [todos os objetos, até os inanimados, têm alguma forma de consciência]could you advance this empirical question.
Newsday – So the idea was that if we can sort out DNA, figure out what our genes mean, then why not figure out consciousness?
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The idea is to find where consciousness originates.
Newsday – You’ve accepted that you lost the bet, but how close do you think you came to winning?
Koch – Well, we’ve learned a lot over the past 25 years.
We’ve learned more about the brain in the last decade than in all of human history. We know better how to manipulate it, either experimentally in the laboratory or by taking psychedelics or other substances.
So we’re starting to track where consciousness lives, so to speak, in the dense jungles of the brain.
But we haven’t reached a consensus among the community of neuroscientists, clinicians and psychologists who study this subject.
Newsday – David, as a philosopher, do you think it’s possible that consciousness is simply unknowable?
Chalmers – Well, there is a huge philosophical mystery here: it is the philosophical mind-body problem.
How the physical processes in the body and brain give you a mind.
How consciousness exists in the first place.
This is what we call the hard problem of consciousness, and it is a very profound philosophical and scientific mystery.
I think it’s important to point out that this bet wasn’t about why consciousness exists. It was deliberately a more manageable scientific question: which areas of the brain are most closely associated with consciousness.
And I think that, in principle, this is a question to which we should be in a position to find out the answer at any moment.
Koch – I disagree, James, with your question about whether consciousness will forever be unknowable [inacessível à inteligência humana].
No! We have a very intimate understanding of consciousness because it’s our world, what you see, the voices you hear right now is a conscious experience.
So we are intimately familiar with it. In fact, we are more familiar with consciousness than with anything else.
What may remain unknowable is, as David says, why are we conscious, how does consciousness arise from an organ like the brain?
However, at the core of our existence in this world is consciousness.
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Consciousness is one of the greatest mysteries that science and philosophy face. Descartes said that the best way to resolve the issue was to ignore it.
Newsday – David, after all these years, Christof bought you the wine… Was it worth the wait?
Chalmers – Yes. The bet was that whoever won would receive a case of good wine and in the end Christof gave in and gave me 6 bottles of wine.
We ended up drinking an excellent Madeira 1978.
In addition, we decided to make another bet for another 25 years. So we’ll meet again in 2048 to see if we’ve discovered the neural correlates of consciousness by then.
Newsday – Christof, your confidence about this path has not been affected, so you will have another chance.
Koch – Yes, technology is improving, especially with companies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink and other related technologies, we’re getting better at directly intervening in the brain.
I actually appreciate the fact that I lost the battle, obviously, but I think we’ve all won the war for Science: We’ve all learned a lot about the neurological basis of consciousness, and that’s progress.
That’s how Science works.
Newsday – Twenty-five years ago, you were brilliant young pioneers in your field. What are young people at that level thinking today? The consciousness of artificial intelligence in 25 years perhaps?
Chalmers – Can we make a conscious AI (artificial intelligence)? This is a very big challenge for the coming years.
It’s also a philosophical question: should we build a conscious AI? Would it be convenient or could it have bad consequences for us or the AI?
Anyway, I think AI is the biggest challenge of our times.
Koch – Can machines be conscious? We do not know. It’s an open question.
2023-07-31 09:17:19
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