A critical analysis of Ned Block’s access consciousness concept in the context of the consciousness problem in non-biological substrates
Philosophy of Science and Technology October 23, 2024 DOI: 10.21146/2413-9084-2024-29-2-88-98 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Qualitative Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that access consciousness is not independent or sufficient to define consciousness: the blindsight example shows that information availability still involves phenomenal experience, and an imagined "super-blindsight" would either be unconscious mechanical processing or full phenomenal consciousness. The author uses this as an analogy for parameter tuning in large language models and concludes that the phenomenal aspect of consciousness remains central to assessing its embodiment in non-biological substrates. |
Abstract
The article provides a brief overview of various points of view on the possibility of embodying artificial consciousness. Although Ned Block’s answer to the question of the possibility of consciousness in machines is rather negative, at first glance, it seems that his concept of the division of consciousness into access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness could help resolve this problem since it is assumed the former can exist without the second. Giving an example based on real facts of blindsight, Blok notes that in these cases, there is not only a phenomenal but also an access consciousness since a person must be asked every time to guess what object is in front of him. To consider the operation of access consciousness without phenomenal consciousness, one would imagine “super-blindsight”, where the subject would discriminate objects in space independently. However, if such “consciousness” can exist without subjective, qualitative experience, then it either does not differ from the mechanical (unconscious) processing of information or, on the contrary, we have all the wealth phenomenal consciousness when the subject himself sees all objects and does not need to guess them. Thus, access consciousness is not independent and sufficient to define consciousness. This example of blindsight provides an obvious illustration and analogy of how information processing is regulated, for example, in large language models, in which it is possible to influence the results of the resulting reactions through temperature or changes in set parameters (changes in the degree of protection). However, the availability of information in cases of blind vision is not only an autonomous consciousness; it requires fine-tuning the model to change its parameters. These findings emphasize the phenomenal aspect of consciousness to consider the possibility of its embodiment in non-biological substrates.