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•TED TALKS•, David Chalmers: How do you explain consciousness?

David Chalmers: How do you explain consciousness?

Right now you have a movie playing inside your head.

It's an amazing multi-track movie. It has 3D vision and surround sound for what you're seeing and hearing right now, but that's just the start of it. Your movie has smell and taste and touch. It has a sense of your body, pain, hunger, orgasms. It has emotions, anger and happiness. It has memories, like scenes from your childhood playing before you. And it has this constant voiceover narrative in your stream of conscious thinking. At the heart of this movie is you experiencing all this directly. This movie is your stream of consciousness, the subject of experience of the mind and the world. Consciousness is one of the fundamental facts of human existence.

Each of us is conscious. We all have our own inner movie, you and you and you. There's nothing we know about more directly. At least, I know about my consciousness directly. I can't be certain that you guys are conscious. Consciousness also is what makes life worth living.

If we weren't conscious, nothing in our lives would have meaning or value. But at the same time, it's the most mysterious phenomenon in the universe. Why are we conscious? Why do we have these inner movies? Why aren't we just robots who process all this input, produce all that output, without experiencing the inner movie at all? Right now, nobody knows the answers to those questions. I'm going to suggest that to integrate consciousness into science, some radical ideas may be needed. Some people say a science of consciousness is impossible.

Science, by its nature, is objective. Consciousness, by its nature, is subjective. So there can never be a science of consciousness. For much of the 20th century, that view held sway. Psychologists studied behavior objectively, neuroscientists studied the brain objectively, and nobody even mentioned consciousness. Even 30 years ago, when TED got started, there was very little scientific work on consciousness. Now, about 20 years ago, all that began to change.

Neuroscientists like Francis Crick and physicists like Roger Penrose said now is the time for science to attack consciousness. And since then, there's been a real explosion, a flowering of scientific work on consciousness. And this work has been wonderful. It's been great. But it also has some fundamental limitations so far. The centerpiece of the science of consciousness in recent years has been the search for correlations, correlations between certain areas of the brain and certain states of consciousness. We saw some of this kind of work from Nancy Kanwisher and the wonderful work she presented just a few minutes ago. Now we understand much better, for example, the kinds of brain areas that go along with the conscious experience of seeing faces or of feeling pain or of feeling happy. But this is still a science of correlations. It's not a science of explanations. We know that these brain areas go along with certain kinds of conscious experience, but we don't know why they do. I like to put this by saying that this kind of work from neuroscience is answering some of the questions we want answered about consciousness, the questions about what certain brain areas do and what they correlate with. But in a certain sense, those are the easy problems. No knock on the neuroscientists. There are no truly easy problems with consciousness. But it doesn't address the real mystery at the core of this subject: why is it that all that physical processing in a brain should be accompanied by consciousness at all? Why is there this inner subjective movie? Right now, we don't really have a bead on that. And you might say, let's just give neuroscience a few years.

It'll turn out to be another emergent phenomenon like traffic jams, like hurricanes, like life, and we'll figure it out. The classical cases of emergence are all cases of emergent behavior, how a traffic jam behaves, how a hurricane functions, how a living organism reproduces and adapts and metabolizes, all questions about objective functioning. You could apply that to the human brain in explaining some of the behaviors and the functions of the human brain as emergent phenomena: how we walk, how we talk, how we play chess, all these questions about behavior. But when it comes to consciousness, questions about behavior are among the easy problems. When it comes to the hard problem, that's the question of why is it that all this behavior is accompanied by subjective experience? And here, the standard paradigm of emergence, even the standard paradigms of neuroscience, don't really, so far, have that much to say. Now, I'm a scientific materialist at heart.

I want a scientific theory of consciousness that works, and for a long time, I banged my head against the wall looking for a theory of consciousness in purely physical terms that would work. But I eventually came to the conclusion that that just didn't work for systematic reasons. It's a long story, but the core idea is just that what you get from purely reductionist explanations in physical terms, in brain-based terms, is stories about the functioning of a system, its structure, its dynamics, the behavior it produces, great for solving the easy problems — how we behave, how we function — but when it comes to subjective experience — why does all this feel like something from the inside? — that's something fundamentally new, and it's always a further question. So I think we're at a kind of impasse here. We've got this wonderful, great chain of explanation, we're used to it, where physics explains chemistry, chemistry explains biology, biology explains parts of psychology. But consciousness doesn't seem to fit into this picture. On the one hand, it's a datum that we're conscious. On the other hand, we don't know how to accommodate it into our scientific view of the world. So I think consciousness right now is a kind of anomaly, one that we need to integrate into our view of the world, but we don't yet see how. Faced with an anomaly like this, radical ideas may be needed, and I think that we may need one or two ideas that initially seem crazy before we can come to grips with consciousness scientifically. Now, there are a few candidates for what those crazy ideas might be.

My friend Dan Dennett, who's here today, has one. His crazy idea is that there is no hard problem of consciousness. The whole idea of the inner subjective movie involves a kind of illusion or confusion. Actually, all we've got to do is explain the objective functions, the behaviors of the brain, and then we've explained everything that needs to be explained. Well I say, more power to him. That's the kind of radical idea that we need to explore if you want to have a purely reductionist brain-based theory of consciousness. At the same time, for me and for many other people, that view is a bit too close to simply denying the datum of consciousness to be satisfactory. So I go in a different direction. In the time remaining, I want to explore two crazy ideas that I think may have some promise. The first crazy idea is that consciousness is fundamental.

Physicists sometimes take some aspects of the universe as fundamental building blocks: space and time and mass. They postulate fundamental laws governing them, like the laws of gravity or of quantum mechanics. These fundamental properties and laws aren't explained in terms of anything more basic. Rather, they're taken as primitive, and you build up the world from there. Now sometimes, the list of fundamentals expands. In the 19th century, Maxwell figured out that you can't explain electromagnetic phenomena in terms of the existing fundamentals — space, time, mass, Newton's laws — so he postulated fundamental laws of electromagnetism and postulated electric charge as a fundamental element that those laws govern. I think that's the situation we're in with consciousness. If you can't explain consciousness in terms of the existing fundamentals — space, time, mass, charge — then as a matter of logic, you need to expand the list. The natural thing to do is to postulate consciousness itself as something fundamental, a fundamental building block of nature. This doesn't mean you suddenly can't do science with it. This opens up the way for you to do science with it. What we then need is to study the fundamental laws governing consciousness, the laws that connect consciousness to other fundamentals: space, time, mass, physical processes. Physicists sometimes say that we want fundamental laws so simple that we could write them on the front of a t-shirt. Well I think something like that is the situation we're in with consciousness. We want to find fundamental laws so simple we could write them on the front of a t-shirt. We don't know what those laws are yet, but that's what we're after. The second crazy idea is that consciousness might be universal.

Every system might have some degree of consciousness. This view is sometimes called panpsychism: pan for all, psych for mind, every system is conscious, not just humans, dogs, mice, flies, but even Rob Knight's microbes, elementary particles. Even a photon has some degree of consciousness. The idea is not that photons are intelligent or thinking. It's not that a photon is wracked with angst because it's thinking, "Aww, I'm always buzzing around near the speed of light. I never get to slow down and smell the roses." No, not like that. But the thought is maybe photons might have some element of raw, subjective feeling, some primitive precursor to consciousness. This may sound a bit kooky to you.

I mean, why would anyone think such a crazy thing? Some motivation comes from the first crazy idea, that consciousness is fundamental. If it's fundamental, like space and time and mass, it's natural to suppose that it might be universal too, the way they are. It's also worth noting that although the idea seems counterintuitive to us, it's much less counterintuitive to people from different cultures, where the human mind is seen as much more continuous with nature. A deeper motivation comes from the idea that perhaps the most simple and powerful way to find fundamental laws connecting consciousness to physical processing is to link consciousness to information.

Wherever there's information processing, there's consciousness. Complex information processing, like in a human, complex consciousness. Simple information processing, simple consciousness. A really exciting thing is in recent years a neuroscientist, Giulio Tononi, has taken this kind of theory and developed it rigorously with a mathematical theory.

He has a mathematical measure of information integration which he calls phi, measuring the amount of information integrated in a system. And he supposes that phi goes along with consciousness. So in a human brain, incredibly large amount of information integration, high degree of phi, a whole lot of consciousness. In a mouse, medium degree of information integration, still pretty significant, pretty serious amount of consciousness. But as you go down to worms, microbes, particles, the amount of phi falls off. The amount of information integration falls off, but it's still non-zero. On Tononi's theory, there's still going to be a non-zero degree of consciousness. In effect, he's proposing a fundamental law of consciousness: high phi, high consciousness. Now, I don't know if this theory is right, but it's actually perhaps the leading theory right now in the science of consciousness, and it's been used to integrate a whole range of scientific data, and it does have a nice property that it is in fact simple enough you can write it on the front of a t-shirt. Another final motivation is that panpsychism might help us to integrate consciousness into the physical world.

Physicists and philosophers have often observed that physics is curiously abstract. It describes the structure of reality using a bunch of equations, but it doesn't tell us about the reality that underlies it. As Stephen Hawking puts it, what puts the fire into the equations? Well, on the panpsychist view, you can leave the equations of physics as they are, but you can take them to be describing the flux of consciousness. That's what physics really is ultimately doing, describing the flux of consciousness. On this view, it's consciousness that puts the fire into the equations. On that view, consciousness doesn't dangle outside the physical world as some kind of extra. It's there right at its heart. This view, I think, the panpsychist view, has the potential to transfigure our relationship to nature, and it may have some pretty serious social and ethical consequences.

Some of these may be counterintuitive. I used to think I shouldn't eat anything which is conscious, so therefore I should be vegetarian. Now, if you're a panpsychist and you take that view, you're going to go very hungry. So I think when you think about it, this tends to transfigure your views, whereas what matters for ethical purposes and moral considerations, not so much the fact of consciousness, but the degree and the complexity of consciousness. It's also natural to ask about consciousness in other systems, like computers.

What about the artificially intelligent system in the movie "Her," Samantha? Is she conscious? Well, if you take the informational, panpsychist view, she certainly has complicated information processing and integration, so the answer is very likely yes, she is conscious. If that's right, it raises pretty serious ethical issues about both the ethics of developing intelligent computer systems and the ethics of turning them off. Finally, you might ask about the consciousness of whole groups, the planet.

Does Canada have its own consciousness? Or at a more local level, does an integrated group like the audience at a TED conference, are we right now having a collective TED consciousness, an inner movie for this collective TED group which is distinct from the inner movies of each of our parts? I don't know the answer to that question, but I think it's at least one worth taking seriously. Okay, so this panpsychist vision, it is a radical one, and I don't know that it's correct.

I'm actually more confident about the first crazy idea, that consciousness is fundamental, than about the second one, that it's universal. I mean, the view raises any number of questions, has any number of challenges, like how do those little bits of consciousness add up to the kind of complex consciousness we know and love. If we can answer those questions, then I think we're going to be well on our way to a serious theory of consciousness. If not, well, this is the hardest problem perhaps in science and philosophy. We can't expect to solve it overnight. But I do think we're going to figure it out eventually. Understanding consciousness is a real key, I think, both to understanding the universe and to understanding ourselves. It may just take the right crazy idea. Thank you.

(Applause)

David Chalmers: How do you explain consciousness? David Chalmers: Şüuru necə izah edirsiniz? David Chalmers: Wie erklären Sie das Bewusstsein? David Chalmers: Πώς εξηγείτε τη συνείδηση; David Chalmers: How do you explain consciousness? David Chalmers: ¿Cómo se explica la conciencia? David Chalmers : Comment expliquez-vous la conscience ? David Chalmers: Come si spiega la coscienza? David Chalmers：意識をどのように説明しますか？ 데이비드 찰머스: 의식을 어떻게 설명하시나요? David Chalmers: Jak wyjaśnić świadomość? David Chalmers: Como você explica a consciência? Дэвид Чалмерс: Как вы объясняете сознание? David Chalmers: Bilinci nasıl açıklıyorsunuz? Девід Чалмерс: Як ви пояснюєте свідомість? 大卫·查尔默斯：你如何解释意识？

Right now you have a movie playing inside your head. Şu anda kafanızın içinde bir film oynuyor.

It’s an amazing multi-track movie. C'est un film multipiste extraordinaire. É um filme multi-faixas incrível. Çok kanallı harika bir film. Це дивовижний багатосерійний фільм. It has 3D vision and surround sound for what you’re seeing and hearing right now, but that’s just the start of it. Ele tem visão 3D e som surround para o que você está vendo e ouvindo agora, mas isso é apenas o começo. Şu anda gördükleriniz ve duyduklarınız için 3D görüntü ve surround sese sahip, ancak bu sadece başlangıç. Він має 3D-зображення та об'ємний звук для того, що ви бачите і чуєте прямо зараз, але це лише початок. Your movie has smell and taste and touch. Seu filme tem cheiro, gosto e toque. Filminizin kokusu, tadı ve dokunuşu var. Ваш фільм має запах, смак і дотик. It has a sense of your body, pain, hunger, orgasms. Tem uma sensação de seu corpo, dor, fome, orgasmos. Вона відчуває ваше тіло, біль, голод, оргазми. It has emotions, anger and happiness. Tem emoções, raiva e felicidade. У ньому є емоції, гнів і щастя. It has memories, like scenes from your childhood playing before you. Il contient des souvenirs, comme des scènes de votre enfance qui se déroulent devant vous. Tem memórias, como cenas de sua infância brincando antes de você. And it has this constant voiceover narrative in your stream of conscious thinking. Et il y a cette voix off constante dans votre flux de pensée conscient. E tem essa narrativa de narração constante em seu fluxo de pensamento consciente. І в ньому постійно присутній голос за кадром у потоці вашого свідомого мислення. At the heart of this movie is you experiencing all this directly. Au cœur de ce film, c'est vous qui faites l'expérience directe de tout cela. No centro deste filme está você vivenciando tudo isso diretamente. У центрі цього фільму - ви безпосередньо переживаєте все це. This movie is your stream of consciousness, the subject of experience of the mind and the world. Ce film est votre flux de conscience, le sujet de l'expérience de l'esprit et du monde. Este filme é o seu fluxo de consciência, o assunto da experiência da mente e do mundo. Цей фільм - ваш потік свідомості, предмет переживання розуму і світу. Consciousness is one of the fundamental facts of human existence. A consciência é um dos fatos fundamentais da existência humana.

Each of us is conscious. Cada um de nós está consciente. Кожен з нас є свідомим. We all have our own inner movie, you and you and you. Todos nós temos nosso próprio filme interior, você e você e você. У кожного з нас є свій власний внутрішній фільм, ти, ти і ти. There’s nothing we know about more directly. At least, I know about my consciousness directly. Pelo menos, eu sei sobre minha consciência diretamente. I can’t be certain that you guys are conscious. Je ne peux pas être certain que vous êtes conscients. Não posso ter certeza de que vocês estão conscientes. Я не можу бути впевненим, що ви притомні. Consciousness also is what makes life worth living. Consciência também é o que faz a vida valer a pena. Свідомість - це також те, що робить життя вартим того, щоб його прожити.

If we weren’t conscious, nothing in our lives would have meaning or value. Якби ми не були свідомими, ніщо в нашому житті не мало б сенсу чи цінності. But at the same time, it’s the most mysterious phenomenon in the universe. Але в той же час це найзагадковіше явище у Всесвіті. Why are we conscious? Por que estamos conscientes? Чому ми свідомі? Why do we have these inner movies? Por que nós temos esses filmes internos? Чому у нас є ці внутрішні фільми? Why aren’t we just robots who process all this input, produce all that output, without experiencing the inner movie at all? Чому ми не просто роботи, які обробляють весь цей вхід, виробляють весь цей вихід, зовсім не відчуваючи внутрішнього фільму? Right now, nobody knows the answers to those questions. Наразі ніхто не знає відповідей на ці питання. I’m going to suggest that to integrate consciousness into science, some radical ideas may be needed. Vou sugerir que para integrar a consciência na ciência, algumas idéias radicais podem ser necessárias. Я припускаю, що для інтеграції свідомості в науку можуть знадобитися деякі радикальні ідеї. Some people say a science of consciousness is impossible. Algumas pessoas dizem que uma ciência da consciência é impossível. Дехто каже, що наука про свідомість неможлива.

Science, by its nature, is objective. Bilim, doğası gereği nesneldir. Наука за своєю природою об'єктивна. Consciousness, by its nature, is subjective. So there can never be a science of consciousness. For much of the 20th century, that view held sway. Über weite Strecken des 20. Jahrhunderts herrschte diese Ansicht vor. Durante grande parte do século 20, essa visão dominou. На протяжении большей части XX века эта точка зрения оставалась неизменной. 20. yüzyılın büyük bir bölümünde bu görüş geçerliliğini korudu. Psychologists studied behavior objectively, neuroscientists studied the brain objectively, and nobody even mentioned consciousness. Die Psychologen untersuchten das Verhalten objektiv, die Neurowissenschaftler das Gehirn objektiv, und niemand erwähnte auch nur das Bewusstsein. Les psychologues ont étudié le comportement de manière objective, les neuroscientifiques ont étudié le cerveau de manière objective, et personne n'a même mentionné la conscience. Психологи об'єктивно вивчали поведінку, нейробіологи об'єктивно вивчали мозок, а про свідомість ніхто навіть не згадував. Even 30 years ago, when TED got started, there was very little scientific work on consciousness. Now, about 20 years ago, all that began to change.

Neuroscientists like Francis Crick and physicists like Roger Penrose said now is the time for science to attack consciousness. And since then, there’s been a real explosion, a flowering of scientific work on consciousness. І відтоді стався справжній вибух, розквіт наукових робіт про свідомість. And this work has been wonderful. It’s been great. But it also has some fundamental limitations so far. Ancak şu ana kadar bazı temel sınırlamaları da var. The centerpiece of the science of consciousness in recent years has been the search for correlations, correlations between certain areas of the brain and certain states of consciousness. Центральним елементом науки про свідомість в останні роки став пошук кореляцій, взаємозв'язків між певними ділянками мозку і певними станами свідомості. We saw some of this kind of work from Nancy Kanwisher and the wonderful work she presented just a few minutes ago. Now we understand much better, for example, the kinds of brain areas that go along with the conscious experience of seeing faces or of feeling pain or of feeling happy. Aujourd'hui, nous comprenons beaucoup mieux, par exemple, les types de zones cérébrales qui accompagnent l'expérience consciente de voir des visages ou de ressentir de la douleur ou de la joie. Тепер ми набагато краще розуміємо, наприклад, які ділянки мозку відповідають за свідомий досвід бачення облич, відчуття болю чи щастя. But this is still a science of correlations. It’s not a science of explanations. We know that these brain areas go along with certain kinds of conscious experience, but we don’t know why they do. I like to put this by saying that this kind of work from neuroscience is answering some of the questions we want answered about consciousness, the questions about what certain brain areas do and what they correlate with. J'aime dire que ce type de travaux neuroscientifiques répond à certaines des questions que nous nous posons sur la conscience, à savoir ce que font certaines zones du cerveau et avec quoi elles sont en corrélation. Nörobilimin bu tür çalışmalarının bilinç hakkında cevaplanmasını istediğimiz bazı sorulara, belirli beyin bölgelerinin ne yaptığı ve neyle ilişkili olduğuna dair sorulara cevap verdiğini söyleyerek bunu ifade etmeyi seviyorum. Мені подобається говорити, що такого роду роботи з нейронауки дають відповіді на деякі питання, які ми хочемо отримати про свідомість, питання про те, що роблять певні ділянки мозку і з чим вони корелюють. But in a certain sense, those are the easy problems. Mas, em certo sentido, esses são os problemas fáceis. No knock on the neuroscientists. Les neuroscientifiques ne sont pas visés. Nenhuma batida nos neurocientistas. Не нарікайте на нейробіологів. There are no truly easy problems with consciousness. But it doesn’t address the real mystery at the core of this subject: why is it that all that physical processing in a brain should be accompanied by consciousness at all? Mais cela n'aborde pas le véritable mystère qui est au cœur de ce sujet : comment se fait-il que tout ce traitement physique dans un cerveau s'accompagne d'une conscience ? Mas não aborda o verdadeiro mistério no cerne deste assunto: por que todo esse processamento físico no cérebro deve ser acompanhado de alguma forma pela consciência? Why is there this inner subjective movie? Por que existe esse filme subjetivo interno? Right now, we don’t really have a bead on that. Pour l'instant, nous ne savons pas vraiment ce qu'il en est. Сейчас у нас нет четкого представления об этом. Наразі ми не знаємо, що з цього приводу думати. And you might say, let’s just give neuroscience a few years. І ви можете сказати, давайте просто дамо нейронауці кілька років.

It’ll turn out to be another emergent phenomenon like traffic jams, like hurricanes, like life, and we’ll figure it out. Il s'agira d'un autre phénomène émergent, comme les embouteillages, les ouragans, la vie, et nous le découvrirons. Será outro fenômeno emergente, como engarrafamentos, furacões, vida, e descobriremos isso. Trafik sıkışıklığı gibi, kasırgalar gibi, yaşam gibi ortaya çıkan başka bir olgu olduğu ortaya çıkacak ve biz bunu çözeceğiz. Це виявиться ще одним емерджентним явищем, як затори, як урагани, як життя, і ми з цим розберемося. The classical cases of emergence are all cases of emergent behavior, how a traffic jam behaves, how a hurricane functions, how a living organism reproduces and adapts and metabolizes, all questions about objective functioning. Les cas classiques d'émergence sont tous des cas de comportement émergent : comment se comporte un embouteillage, comment fonctionne un ouragan, comment un organisme vivant se reproduit, s'adapte et métabolise, autant de questions relatives au fonctionnement objectif. Klasik ortaya çıkış vakalarının hepsi ortaya çıkan davranış vakalarıdır; bir trafik sıkışıklığının nasıl davrandığı, bir kasırganın nasıl işlediği, canlı bir organizmanın nasıl üreyip adapte olduğu ve metabolize olduğu, nesnel işleyişle ilgili tüm sorular. Класичні випадки емерджентності - це всі випадки емерджентної поведінки, як поводиться затор, як функціонує ураган, як живий організм розмножується, адаптується і метаболізує, всі питання про об'єктивне функціонування. You could apply that to the human brain in explaining some of the behaviors and the functions of the human brain as emergent phenomena: how we walk, how we talk, how we play chess, all these questions about behavior. But when it comes to consciousness, questions about behavior are among the easy problems. Mais lorsqu'il s'agit de la conscience, les questions relatives au comportement font partie des problèmes les plus faciles à résoudre. Mas quando se trata de consciência, questões sobre comportamento estão entre os problemas fáceis. When it comes to the hard problem, that’s the question of why is it that all this behavior is accompanied by subjective experience? Quando se trata do difícil problema, essa é a questão de por que todo esse comportamento é acompanhado por uma experiência subjetiva? Коли справа доходить до складної проблеми, виникає питання, чому вся ця поведінка супроводжується суб'єктивними переживаннями? And here, the standard paradigm of emergence, even the standard paradigms of neuroscience, don’t really, so far, have that much to say. Et ici, le paradigme standard de l'émergence, même les paradigmes standard des neurosciences, n'ont pas vraiment, jusqu'à présent, grand-chose à dire. E aqui, o paradigma padrão de emergência, mesmo os paradigmas padrão da neurociência, não têm, até agora, muito o que dizer. І тут стандартна парадигма виникнення, навіть стандартні парадигми нейронауки, поки що не мають що сказати. Now, I’m a scientific materialist at heart. Je suis un matérialiste scientifique dans l'âme. Agora, sou um materialista científico de coração.

I want a scientific theory of consciousness that works, and for a long time, I banged my head against the wall looking for a theory of consciousness in purely physical terms that would work. But I eventually came to the conclusion that that just didn’t work for systematic reasons. Але врешті-решт я дійшов висновку, що це просто не працює з системних причин. It’s a long story, but the core idea is just that what you get from purely reductionist explanations in physical terms, in brain-based terms, is stories about the functioning of a system, its structure, its dynamics, the behavior it produces, great for solving the easy problems — how we behave, how we function — but when it comes to subjective experience — why does all this feel like something from the inside? C'est une longue histoire, mais l'idée centrale est que les explications purement réductionnistes en termes physiques, en termes cérébraux, sont des histoires sur le fonctionnement d'un système, sa structure, sa dynamique, le comportement qu'il produit, ce qui est excellent pour résoudre les problèmes faciles - comment nous nous comportons, comment nous fonctionnons - mais lorsqu'il s'agit de l'expérience subjective - pourquoi tout cela ressemble-t-il à quelque chose de l'intérieur ? Це довга історія, але основна ідея полягає в тому, що те, що ви отримуєте від чисто редукціоністських пояснень у фізичних термінах, в термінах мозку, - це історії про функціонування системи, її структуру, динаміку, поведінку, яку вона продукує, чудово підходить для вирішення простих проблем - як ми поводимося, як ми функціонуємо, - але коли справа доходить до суб'єктивного досвіду - чому все це відчувається як щось зсередини? — that’s something fundamentally new, and it’s always a further question. So I think we’re at a kind of impasse here. Тож я думаю, що ми тут у своєрідному глухому куті. We’ve got this wonderful, great chain of explanation, we’re used to it, where physics explains chemistry, chemistry explains biology, biology explains parts of psychology. У нас є чудовий, чудовий ланцюжок пояснень, ми звикли до нього, де фізика пояснює хімію, хімія пояснює біологію, біологія пояснює частину психології. But consciousness doesn’t seem to fit into this picture. On the one hand, it’s a datum that we’re conscious. D'une part, c'est une donnée que nous sommes conscients. Por um lado, é um dado que estamos conscientes. З одного боку, це точка відліку, яку ми усвідомлюємо. On the other hand, we don’t know how to accommodate it into our scientific view of the world. So I think consciousness right now is a kind of anomaly, one that we need to integrate into our view of the world, but we don’t yet see how. Je pense donc que la conscience est actuellement une sorte d'anomalie, que nous devons intégrer dans notre vision du monde, mais que nous ne voyons pas encore comment. Então, acho que a consciência agora é um tipo de anomalia, que precisamos integrar em nossa visão do mundo, mas ainda não vemos como. Faced with an anomaly like this, radical ideas may be needed, and I think that we may need one or two ideas that initially seem crazy before we can come to grips with consciousness scientifically. Face à une telle anomalie, des idées radicales peuvent être nécessaires, et je pense que nous aurons peut-être besoin d'une ou deux idées qui sembleront d'abord farfelues avant de pouvoir appréhender la conscience de manière scientifique. Diante de uma anomalia como essa, idéias radicais podem ser necessárias, e acho que podemos precisar de uma ou duas idéias que inicialmente parecem loucas antes de podermos enfrentar cientificamente a consciência. Now, there are a few candidates for what those crazy ideas might be. Aujourd'hui, il y a quelques candidats à ces idées folles.

My friend Dan Dennett, who’s here today, has one. Mon ami Dan Dennett, qui est ici aujourd'hui, en a une. His crazy idea is that there is no hard problem of consciousness. The whole idea of the inner subjective movie involves a kind of illusion or confusion. L'idée même du film subjectif intérieur implique une sorte d'illusion ou de confusion. Actually, all we’ve got to do is explain the objective functions, the behaviors of the brain, and then we’ve explained everything that needs to be explained. En fait, il suffit d'expliquer les fonctions objectives, les comportements du cerveau, pour expliquer tout ce qui doit l'être. Well I say, more power to him. Eh bien moi je dis, plus de pouvoir pour lui. That’s the kind of radical idea that we need to explore if you want to have a purely reductionist brain-based theory of consciousness. C'est le genre d'idée radicale qu'il faut explorer si l'on veut avoir une théorie purement réductionniste de la conscience basée sur le cerveau. At the same time, for me and for many other people, that view is a bit too close to simply denying the datum of consciousness to be satisfactory. So I go in a different direction. In the time remaining, I want to explore two crazy ideas that I think may have some promise. Dans le temps qui reste, j'aimerais explorer deux idées folles qui me semblent prometteuses. The first crazy idea is that consciousness is fundamental.

Physicists sometimes take some aspects of the universe as fundamental building blocks: space and time and mass. Les physiciens considèrent parfois certains aspects de l'univers comme des éléments fondamentaux : l'espace, le temps et la masse. They postulate fundamental laws governing them, like the laws of gravity or of quantum mechanics. Ils postulent des lois fondamentales qui les régissent, comme les lois de la gravité ou de la mécanique quantique. These fundamental properties and laws aren’t explained in terms of anything more basic. Ces propriétés et lois fondamentales ne s'expliquent pas par quelque chose de plus élémentaire. Rather, they’re taken as primitive, and you build up the world from there. Ils sont plutôt considérés comme primitifs, et le monde se construit à partir de là. Now sometimes, the list of fundamentals expands. In the 19th century, Maxwell figured out that you can’t explain electromagnetic phenomena in terms of the existing fundamentals — space, time, mass, Newton’s laws — so he postulated fundamental laws of electromagnetism and postulated electric charge as a fundamental element that those laws govern. Au XIXe siècle, Maxwell a compris qu'il était impossible d'expliquer les phénomènes électromagnétiques à partir des principes fondamentaux existants (espace, temps, masse, lois de Newton). Il a donc postulé les lois fondamentales de l'électromagnétisme et la charge électrique en tant qu'élément fondamental régi par ces lois. I think that’s the situation we’re in with consciousness. If you can’t explain consciousness in terms of the existing fundamentals — space, time, mass, charge — then as a matter of logic, you need to expand the list. The natural thing to do is to postulate consciousness itself as something fundamental, a fundamental building block of nature. This doesn’t mean you suddenly can’t do science with it. Cela ne veut pas dire que vous ne pouvez soudainement plus faire de science avec. This opens up the way for you to do science with it. What we then need is to study the fundamental laws governing consciousness, the laws that connect consciousness to other fundamentals: space, time, mass, physical processes. Il s'agit alors d'étudier les lois fondamentales qui régissent la conscience, les lois qui relient la conscience aux autres éléments fondamentaux : l'espace, le temps, la masse, les processus physiques. Physicists sometimes say that we want fundamental laws so simple that we could write them on the front of a t-shirt. Les physiciens disent parfois que nous voulons des lois fondamentales si simples que nous pourrions les écrire sur le devant d'un t-shirt. Well I think something like that is the situation we’re in with consciousness. We want to find fundamental laws so simple we could write them on the front of a t-shirt. We don’t know what those laws are yet, but that’s what we’re after. Мы пока не знаем, что это за законы, но мы стремимся именно к этому. The second crazy idea is that consciousness might be universal.

Every system might have some degree of consciousness. Todo sistema pode ter algum grau de consciência. This view is sometimes called panpsychism: pan for all, psych for mind, every system is conscious, not just humans, dogs, mice, flies, but even Rob Knight’s microbes, elementary particles. Ce point de vue est parfois appelé panpsychisme : pan pour tous, psych pour l'esprit, chaque système est conscient, pas seulement les humains, les chiens, les souris, les mouches, mais même les microbes de Rob Knight, les particules élémentaires. Even a photon has some degree of consciousness. The idea is not that photons are intelligent or thinking. It’s not that a photon is wracked with angst because it’s thinking, "Aww, I’m always buzzing around near the speed of light. Ce n'est pas qu'un photon soit angoissé parce qu'il pense : "Oh, je suis toujours en train de bourdonner près de la vitesse de la lumière. I never get to slow down and smell the roses." No, not like that. But the thought is maybe photons might have some element of raw, subjective feeling, some primitive precursor to consciousness. Но есть мысль, что фотоны могут обладать каким-то элементом сырого, субъективного чувства, каким-то примитивным предшественником сознания. This may sound a bit kooky to you.

I mean, why would anyone think such a crazy thing? Some motivation comes from the first crazy idea, that consciousness is fundamental. If it’s fundamental, like space and time and mass, it’s natural to suppose that it might be universal too, the way they are. It’s also worth noting that although the idea seems counterintuitive to us, it’s much less counterintuitive to people from different cultures, where the human mind is seen as much more continuous with nature. Il convient également de noter que si cette idée nous semble contre-intuitive, elle l'est beaucoup moins pour les personnes issues de cultures différentes, où l'esprit humain est perçu comme étant beaucoup plus proche de la nature. A deeper motivation comes from the idea that perhaps the most simple and powerful way to find fundamental laws connecting consciousness to physical processing is to link consciousness to information. Une motivation plus profonde vient de l'idée que la manière la plus simple et la plus puissante de trouver des lois fondamentales reliant la conscience au traitement physique est peut-être de relier la conscience à l'information.

Wherever there’s information processing, there’s consciousness. Complex information processing, like in a human, complex consciousness. Simple information processing, simple consciousness. A really exciting thing is in recent years a neuroscientist, Giulio Tononi, has taken this kind of theory and developed it rigorously with a mathematical theory. Ces dernières années, un neuroscientifique, Giulio Tononi, a repris ce type de théorie et l'a développé rigoureusement à l'aide d'une théorie mathématique.

He has a mathematical measure of information integration which he calls phi, measuring the amount of information integrated in a system. Il dispose d'une mesure mathématique de l'intégration de l'information qu'il appelle phi et qui mesure la quantité d'informations intégrées dans un système. And he supposes that phi goes along with consciousness. So in a human brain, incredibly large amount of information integration, high degree of phi, a whole lot of consciousness. Ainsi, dans un cerveau humain, une quantité incroyablement importante d'informations est intégrée, le degré de phi est élevé et la conscience est très présente. In a mouse, medium degree of information integration, still pretty significant, pretty serious amount of consciousness. But as you go down to worms, microbes, particles, the amount of phi falls off. The amount of information integration falls off, but it’s still non-zero. On Tononi’s theory, there’s still going to be a non-zero degree of consciousness. Selon la théorie de Tononi, il y aura toujours un degré de conscience non nul. In effect, he’s proposing a fundamental law of consciousness: high phi, high consciousness. Now, I don’t know if this theory is right, but it’s actually perhaps the leading theory right now in the science of consciousness, and it’s been used to integrate a whole range of scientific data, and it does have a nice property that it is in fact simple enough you can write it on the front of a t-shirt. Je ne sais pas si cette théorie est juste, mais elle est peut-être la principale théorie actuelle de la science de la conscience, et elle a été utilisée pour intégrer toute une série de données scientifiques, et elle a l'avantage d'être suffisamment simple pour qu'on puisse l'écrire sur le devant d'un t-shirt. Another final motivation is that panpsychism might help us to integrate consciousness into the physical world.

Physicists and philosophers have often observed that physics is curiously abstract. It describes the structure of reality using a bunch of equations, but it doesn’t tell us about the reality that underlies it. As Stephen Hawking puts it, what puts the fire into the equations? Comme le dit Stephen Hawking, qu'est-ce qui met le feu aux équations ? Well, on the panpsychist view, you can leave the equations of physics as they are, but you can take them to be describing the flux of consciousness. Selon le point de vue panpsychiste, on peut laisser les équations de la physique telles quelles, mais on peut les considérer comme décrivant le flux de la conscience. That’s what physics really is ultimately doing, describing the flux of consciousness. On this view, it’s consciousness that puts the fire into the equations. Selon ce point de vue, c'est la conscience qui met le feu aux équations. On that view, consciousness doesn’t dangle outside the physical world as some kind of extra. De ce point de vue, la conscience n'est pas suspendue à l'extérieur du monde physique comme une sorte de supplément. It’s there right at its heart. This view, I think, the panpsychist view, has the potential to transfigure our relationship to nature, and it may have some pretty serious social and ethical consequences.

Some of these may be counterintuitive. I used to think I shouldn’t eat anything which is conscious, so therefore I should be vegetarian. Now, if you’re a panpsychist and you take that view, you’re going to go very hungry. So I think when you think about it, this tends to transfigure your views, whereas what matters for ethical purposes and moral considerations, not so much the fact of consciousness, but the degree and the complexity of consciousness. It’s also natural to ask about consciousness in other systems, like computers.

What about the artificially intelligent system in the movie "Her," Samantha? Is she conscious? Well, if you take the informational, panpsychist view, she certainly has complicated information processing and integration, so the answer is very likely yes, she is conscious. If that’s right, it raises pretty serious ethical issues about both the ethics of developing intelligent computer systems and the ethics of turning them off. Finally, you might ask about the consciousness of whole groups, the planet.

Does Canada have its own consciousness? Le Canada a-t-il sa propre conscience ? Or at a more local level, does an integrated group like the audience at a TED conference, are we right now having a collective TED consciousness, an inner movie for this collective TED group which is distinct from the inner movies of each of our parts? Ou à un niveau plus local, un groupe intégré comme le public d'une conférence TED, avons-nous en ce moment une conscience TED collective, un film intérieur pour ce groupe TED collectif qui est distinct des films intérieurs de chacune de nos parties ? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I think it’s at least one worth taking seriously. Je ne connais pas la réponse à cette question, mais je pense qu'elle mérite au moins d'être prise au sérieux. Okay, so this panpsychist vision, it is a radical one, and I don’t know that it’s correct.

I’m actually more confident about the first crazy idea, that consciousness is fundamental, than about the second one, that it’s universal. I mean, the view raises any number of questions, has any number of challenges, like how do those little bits of consciousness add up to the kind of complex consciousness we know and love. If we can answer those questions, then I think we’re going to be well on our way to a serious theory of consciousness. If not, well, this is the hardest problem perhaps in science and philosophy. We can’t expect to solve it overnight. Nous ne pouvons pas espérer résoudre le problème du jour au lendemain. But I do think we’re going to figure it out eventually. Mais je pense que nous finirons par trouver une solution. Understanding consciousness is a real key, I think, both to understanding the universe and to understanding ourselves. It may just take the right crazy idea. Для этого может потребоваться просто правильная безумная идея. Thank you.

(Applause) (Applaudissements)