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Rating: "Suspended halfway between the inconceivable cosmic immensity of relativistic space-time and the elusive and indistinct flicker of quantum charges, we human beings, more akin to rainbows and mirages than to architraves and boulders, are unpredictable poems that write themselves - vague, metaphorical, ambiguous, and sometimes extraordinarily beautiful" (Douglas R. Hofstadter)
Among the goals of science, I don't think there is anything more complicated, more "impossible to explain" than the origin and nature of consciousness. Perhaps the only other problem of equal complexity is that of the origin of the Universe, which maybe, in the end, are the same thing (but I will try to explain this later).
Why?
Because the typical characteristic of consciousness is subjectivity.
Let me clarify.
Let's pretend that in 2039 we managed to create an "artificial" racehorse, that is, a truly perfect imitation of a real, "natural" horse. How can we come to conclude, once the horse is beautifully ready before us, that the imitation is truly perfect? Simple.
First of all, we have 200 people (the number I'm giving now, and the numbers I will give later are just random) ride it. If it responds in an absolutely realistic way to their commands, if it neighs, if it has to stop to rest after 60 kilometers of running, if it smells of sweat like a horse, if after drinking and eating 5 kilos of oats it is able to resume running, if it behaves like a real horse, then the imitation is truly successful.
But what about consciousness, assuming that real horses have one?
Is it enough to believe the builders and say that the horse is indeed conscious, experiences sensations, just because 200 people observe that when we whip it, it screams in pain? Or that if we pet it, it purrs? Or that while sleeping, its eyes whirl as if following the course of its dreams?
Well, now that we've had our fun, let's put the bionic horse back in the box.
Let's put a "real" human being in its place and, after giving them a good punch to the head or telling them their favorite football team was brutally beaten in the derby, let's ask ourselves the same question.
Did they really feel something following the punch to the head and the dire news about the derby?
It's clear that in this case, there are two possible paths:
1) Believe "by faith," even if I can't observe it "from the inside," putting myself "in their place," that the human being experiences those sensations, those emotions, hopes, pains, etc. that, based on their behavior, they seem to experience. That they indeed have a "soul," responsible for their inner life. This soul, made of a "spiritual" substance, has an existence, in me as in them, of equal, even superior, dignity to the bodily and material one.
2) Deny that, despite their behavior suggesting it, they have consciousness, have a soul, truly feel anything, that they have a "subjectivity". A conscious behavior is not enough for one to truly have an inner life. Just as a box shaped like and weighing as much as a television, bought in Forcella, as De Crescenzo told, isn't enough for there to truly be a television inside.
Point 2, very "black-metal" indeed, represents the path that leads to extreme solipsism, i.e., only I truly have consciousness, probably everyone else lives in my dream, I'm just like a dog in this infinite darkness, the universe was born when I was born and will end when I die (if it ever happens), I am God.
Point 1 instead represents the standpoint of common sense, particularly that of "social morality" and specifically "Christian" morality.
The path chosen by Hofstadter (and his associates Dennett, Metzinger, etc.) renounces something fundamental to position itself halfway between the two, and is as follows:
1.5) That something/someone that I, no less than others, feel I am, the subject (but also object) of my sensations and emotions, blah, blah, blah, is as real as... a theatrical performance, based on a magic script, which, whenever staged by a selected group of actors, makes appear inside the theater, as if by magic, not only, on stage, a beautiful scenic setup and an exciting story but also, by enchantment, in the audience, a viewer/director, the only possible one, sprung up from who knows where.
That special script is the true essence of my self.
That viewer/director sprung up from who knows where is my conscious self.
And finally, the author of the script, continuously rewritten and updated, is a bit of everyone, actors, theater, viewer, director, as well as the crowd outside the theater.
This is the core, the "soul" of this theory that denies any spiritual substance to the human (and generally animal) soul, denying it an objective existence, explaining the subjective characters of consciousness, including the I, simply by declaring them works of pure magic by Nature, considering them mere "private" illusions for a single "most privileged" spectator.
That these illusory shows, these "rainbows and mirages", form, to observe themselves, in imitation of "Gödelian" strange loops, that they are born, grow and become more and more complex and intricate, like wonderful plants, inside animal (particularly human) brains over the years, that the self-scripts can propagate from one brain to another and as such are immortal (this is the good news), and that, being propagable, they could indeed be extracted from a single human brain and run even in multiple synthetic brains in parallel, are just details you can find in the book.
Enjoy the reading, all you curious but above all brave "rainbows and mirages".
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