. . . would that solve the mind-body problem?
One aspect of the mind-body problem is the problem of the subjectivity of conscious experience. As I have argued on numerous occasions, the subjectivity of conscious experience and the manner in which it connects to its physical substratum in the brain cannot be rendered intelligible from an objectifying 3rd-person point of view. Even if we had in our possession a completed neuroscience, we would not be able to understand how conscious experiences arise from the wetware of the brain.
But suppose someone objects as follows:
Robotics is making tremendous strides. In the future we may be able to build robots that are behaviorally indistinguishable from human beings. They will walk, talk, and look like human beings. One can even imagine them being made so human-like that a superficial physical examination would not reveal their robotic status. Imagine a 'female' robot that could pass a cursory gynecological examination and fool a gynecologist or a 'male' robot that could pass a superficial prostate exam and fool a urologist . . .
Suppose further that such a robot not only passes all linguistic and non-linguistic behavioral tests for being conscious, but really is conscious, really does feel ill at ease in the physician's office, even though the physical substratum of the feelings is silicon-based. Suppose, in other words, that consciousness and indeed self-consciousness emerge in this robot.
We will then have an answer to the mind-body problem: we will know that consciousness is nothing special and nothing mysterious. We will know that it does not have a higher, meta-physical or super-natural origin, but is simply the byproduct of the functioning of a sufficiently complex machine, whether the machine be an artifact of a human artificer or the 'artifact' of natural selection.
But if we think about this carefully, we realize that even if this sci-fi scenario were realized, we would still not have a solution to the mind-body problem. For the problem is to render intelligible to ourselves, to understand, HOW consciousness can arise from matter. Building a robot in which consciousness DOES arise or manifest itself does nothing to render understandable how the arisal occurs. Nor does it show that the arisal is an emergence from matter. The mere fact of consciousness is no proof that it has emerged from a physical substratum, and the mere claim that it has so emerged is an empty asseveration unless the exact mechanism of the emergence can be laid bare. And good luck with that.
Suppose that there is a group of philosophizing robots. These machines are so sophisticated that they ask Big Questions. One of the problems under discussion might well be the mind-body problem in robots. The fact that they know that they had been constructed by human robotics engineers in Palo Alto, California would do nothing to alleviate their puzzlement. In fact, one of the philosophizing robots could propose the theory that the emergence of consciousness in their silicon brains is not to be interpreted as an emergence from matter or as a dependence of consciousness on matter, but as a Cartesian mind's becoming embodied in them: at a point of sufficient complexity, a Cartesian mind embodies itself in the robot.
In other words, what could stop a philosophizing robot from rejecting emergentism and being a substance dualist? He knows his origin, or at least the origin of his body; but how does knowing that he is a robot, and thus a human artifact prevent his considering himself to be an artifact housing a Cartesian mind? He might trot out all the standard dualist arguments.
Our philosophizing robot would be able to exclude this Cartesian possibility only if he understood HOW consciousness arises from matter. If he knew that, he would know that he does not have a higher origin. And let's not forget that our philosophizing robot is very smart: so smart that he sees right through the stupidity of eliminative materialism.
In sum, even if we knew how to build (really) conscious machines, such know-how would not be the knowledge necessary to solve the mind-body problem.
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