Octopuses, aliens, squirrels and AI

I’ve been toying with an argument for dualism along these lines:

1. Octopuses are conscious.

2. Technologically advanced aliens are or would be conscious.

3. Squirrels are conscious.

4. Current LLMs are not conscious.

Claims 1–3 require a pretty strong multiple realizability. On materialism, our best such multiple realizability is a functionalism. But it is likely that our current LLMs have more sophisticated general intelligence than squirrels. Thus, a functionalism that makes 1–3 true also violates 4.

Dualism, on the other hand, can allow for all of 1–4 by supposing the hypothesis that all and only intellectually sophisticated living things have souls.

Could a physicalist do the same? I think the difficulty is that life is very fuzzy on physicalism, in a way in which consciousness should not be. On dualism, however, we can suppose that God or the laws of nature have a seemingly arbitrary threshold of what life is.

Unconscious aliens

Lately I’ve been starting my philosophy of mind course with Carolyn Gilman’s short story about unconscious but highly intelligent aliens.

We can imagine such aliens having thoughts, beliefs, concepts, representational and motivational states. After all, we have beliefs even when totally unconscious, and we have subconscious thoughts, concepts, as well as representational and motivational states.

I’ve wondered what unconscious aliens would think about our philosophical arguments about physicalism and consciousness. They might not have the concept of consciousness or of an experiential state, but they could have the concept of “that special mode of representing reality that humans have and we don’t”. And so now I ask myself: Would these aliens have any reason to think that consciousness-based arguments for dualism have any force? Would they have any reason to think that “special mode” is a non-physical mode?

Of course, the aliens might be convinced of dualism on the basis of intentionality arguments. But would something about humans give them additional evidence of dualism about humans?

The aliens shouldn’t be surprised to discover that humans when awake have some ways of processing inputs that they themselves don’t, nor should that give any evidence for dualism. Neither should the presence of some special “phenomenological” vocabulary in humans for describing such processing.

But I think what should give the aliens some evidence is the conviction that many humans have that their “experiences” lack physical properties, that they are categorically different from physical properties and things. If someone describes an object of sensory perception as lacking color, that gives one reason to think the object indeed lacks color. If someone describes the object of introspective perception as lacking charge or mass, that gives one reason to think the object indeed lacks charge or mass.

The aliens would need to then consider the fact that some people have the conviction and others do not, and try to figure out which ones are doing a better job learning from their introspection.

The unknowability part of epistemicism about vagueness

One way to present epistemicism is to say that

1. vague concepts have precise boundaries, but

2. it is not possible for us to know these boundaries.

A theist should be suspicious of epistemicism thus formulated. For if there are precise boundaries, God knows them. And if God knows them, he can reveal them to us. So it is at least metaphysically possible for us to know them.

Perhaps the “possible” in (b) should be read as something stronger than metaphysical possibility. But whatever the modality in (b) is, it seems to imply:

3. none of us will ever know these boundaries.

But if epistemicism entails (c), then we don’t know epistemicism to be true. For if there are sharp boundaries, for all we know God will one day reveal them to a pious philosopher who prays really hard for an answer.

I think the best move would be to replace (b) with:

4. it is not possible for us to know these boundaries without reliance on the supernatural.

This is more plausible, but it seems hard to be all that confident about (d). Maybe there is some really elegant semantic theory that has yet to be discovered that yields the boundaries. Or maybe our mind has natural powers beyond those we know.

Let me try, however, to offer a bit of an argument for (d). Let’s imagine what the boundary between bald and non-bald would be like. As a first attempt, we might think it’s like this:

1. Necessarily, x is bald iff x has fewer than n hairs.

But there is no n for which (1) is true. For n would have to be at least two, since it is possible to be bald but have a hair. Now imagine Bill the Bald who has n − 1 hairs, and now imagine that these hairs grow in length until each one is so long that Bill can visibly and fully cover his scalp with them. At that point, Bill wouldn’t be bald, yet he would still have n − 1 hairs. So, the baldness boundary cannot be expressed numerically in terms of the number of hairs.

As a second attempt, we might hope for a total-length criterion.

2. Necessarily, x is bald iff the total length of x’s hairs is less than x centimeters.

But it is possible to have two people with the same total length of hairs, one of whom is bald and the other is not. For the thickness of hairs counts: if one just barely has the requisite total length but freakishly thin hairs, that won’t do. On the other hand, clearly x would have to be at least four centimeters, since a single ordinary hair of four centimeters is not enough to render one non-bald, but one could have a total hair length of four centimeters and yet be non-bald, if one has four hairs, each one centimeter long and 10 centimeters in diameter, covering one’s scalp with a thick keratinous layer.

So, we really should be measuring total volume, not length. But there are other problems. Shape probably matters. Suppose Helga has a single hair, of normal diameter, but it is freakishly rigid and long, long enough to provide the requisite volume, but immovably sticking up away from the scalp and providing no coverage. Moreover, whatever we are measuring has to be relative to the size of the scalp. A baby needs less hair to cease to be bald than an adult. But it’s not just relative to the size of the scalp, but also the shape of the scalp. If one has a very large surface area of scalp but that is solely due to many tiny wrinkles, one doesn’t need an amount of hair proportional to that large surface area. To a first approximation, what matters is the surface area of the upper part of the convex hull of one’s scalp. But even that’s not right if we imagine a scalp that has very large wrinkles.

So, in fact, we have good reason to think the real boundary wouldn’t be simply numerical. It would involve some function of hair shape, volume and rigidity, as well as of scalp shape and size. And if we think about cases, we realize that it will be a very complex function, and we are nowhere close to being able to state the function. Moreover, to be honest, there are likely to be other variables that matter.

At this point, we start to see the immense amount of complexity that would be involved in any plausible statement of the precise boundary of baldness, and that gives us positive reason to doubt that short of something supernatural we could know where the boundary lies.

But suppose our confidence has not yet been quashed. We still have other serious problems. What we are looking for is a perfectly precise necessary and sufficient condition for someone to be bald. In that definition, we cannot use other vague terms. That would be cheating. What the epistemicist meant by saying that we don’t know where the boundaries lie was that we do not know any transparently precise statements of the boundaries, statements not involving other vague terms. But “hair” itself is a vague term. Both hair and horns are made of keratin. Where does the boundary between hair and horns lie? Similarly, “scalp” is vague, too. And it’s only the volume of the part of the hairs sticking out of the scalp that counts—the size of the root is irrelevant. But “sticking out” is vague, as is obvious when we Google for microscopic photography of scalps. And which particles are in the hair or in the scalp is going to be vague. Next, any volume and surface area measurements suffer from vagueness even if we fix the particles, because for quantum reasons particles will have spread out wavefunctions. And then Relativity Theory comes in: volume and surface area depend on reference frame, and so we need a fully precise definition of the relevant reference frame.

Once we see all the complexity needed in giving a transparently precise statement of the boundary of baldness, it becomes very plausible that we can’t know it by natural means, just as it is very plausible that no human can know the first million digits of π by natural means.

And things get even worse. For humans are not the only things that can be bald. Klingons can be bald, too. Probably, though, only humanoid things are bald in the same sense of the word, but even when restricted to humanoid things, a precise statement of the boundary of baldness will have to apply to beings from an infinite number of possible species. And the norms of baldness will clearly be species-relative. Not to mention the difficulty of defining what hair and scalp are, once we are dealing with beings whose biochemistry is different from ours. It is now starting to look like a transparently precise statement of the boundary of baldness might actually have infinite complexity.

We aren't just rational animals

I think some Aristotelian philosophers are inclined to think that our nature is to be rational animals, so that all rational animals would be of the same metaphysical species. Here is a problem with this. Our nature—or form or essence—specifies the norms for our structure. Our norms specify that we should be bipedal: there is something wrong with us if we are incapable of bipedality. But an intelligent squid would be a rational animal, and its norms would surely not specify that it is supposed to be bipedal. So, it seems, that the hypothetical intelligent squid would have a different nature from ours.

But that was too quick. For it could be that our nature grounds conditionals like:

1. If you’re human, you should have two arms and two legs

2. If you’re a squid, you should have eight arms and two tentacles.

We have some reason to think there are such conditional normative facts even if we take our metaphysical species narrowly to be something like human or even homo sapiens, since presumably our nature grounds normative conditionals about bodily structure with antecedents specifying whether we are male or female.

But there is a hitch here: if humans and intelligent squid have the same form, what makes it be the case that for me the antecedent of 1 is true while for Alice (say) the antecedent of 2 is true? I think our best story may be that it is facts about DNA, so in fact the antecedents of 1 and 2 are abbreviations for complex facts about DNA.

That might work for DNA-based animals, which are all the animals we have on earth, but it probably won’t work for all possible animals. For surely there nomically could be animals that are not based on DNA, and it is implausible that we carry in our nature the grounds for an array of conditionals for all the nomically (at least) possible genetic encoding schemes.

I suppose we could take our nature to be rational members of the Animalia, with the assumption that the kingdom Animalia necessarily includes only DNA-based organisms (but not all of them, of course). But Animalia seems a somewhat arbitrary choice of classification to tack on to rationality. It doesn’t have the exobiological generality of animal, the earthly generality of DNA-based organism, or the specificity of human.

It seems to me that

• rational DNA-based organism, or

• rational member of genus Homo

are better options for where to draw the lines of our metaphysical species, assuming “rationality” is the right category (as opposed to, say, St. John Paul II’s suggestion that we are fundamentally self-givers), than either rational animal or rational member of Animalia.

In vitro fertilization and Artificial Intelligence

The Catholic Church teaches that it is wrong for us to intentionally reproduce by any means other than marital intercourse (though things can be done to make marital intercourse more fertile than it otherwise would be). In particular, human in vitro fertilization is wrong.

But there is clearly nothing wrong with our engaging in in vitro fertilization of plants. And I have never heard a Catholic moralist object to the in vitro fertilization of farm animals.

Suppose we met intelligent aliens. Would it be permissible for us to reproduce them in vitro? I think the question hinges on whether what is wrong with in vitro fertilization has to do with the fact that the creature that is reproduced is one of us or has to do with the fact that it is a person. I suspect it has to do with the fact that it is a person, and hence our reproducing non-human persons in vitro would be wrong, too. Otherwise, we would have the absurd situation where we might permissibly reproduce an alien in vitro, and they would permissibly reproduce a human in vitro, and then we would swap babies.

But if what is problematic is our reproducing persons in vitro, then we need to look for a relevant moral principle. I think it may have something to do with the sacredness of persons. When something is sacred, we are not surprised that there are restrictions. Sacred acts are often restricted by agent, location and time. They are something whose significance goes beyond humanity, and hence we do not have the authority to engage in them willy-nilly. It may be that the production of persons is sacred in this way, and hence we need the authority to produce persons. Our nature testifies to us that we have this authority in the context of marital intercourse. We have no data telling us that we are authorized to produce persons in any other way, and without such data we should not do it.

This would have a serious repercussion for artificial intelligence research. If we think there is a significant chance that strong AI might be possible, we should stay away from research that might well produce a software person.

The possibility of multiple incarnations

A classic theological question is whether it was possible for one person of the Trinity to be simultaneously multiply incarnate. The question is particularly important if it turns out that there are other non-human rational animals--namely, aliens--in need of redemption.

Here is an argument for this possibility:

1. An incarnation of a divine person is possible.
2. If an incarnation of a divine person is possible, multiple sequential incarnations of one divine person are possible.
3. If multiple sequential incarnations of one divine person are possible, multiple simultaneous incarnations of one divine person are possible.
4. So, multiple simultaneous incarnations of one divine person are possible.

Premise (1) is this: according to revelation an incarnation is actual, hence it is possible. Premise (2) is, I think, quite plausible. After all, if an incarnation is possible, it would also be possible for this incarnation to come to an end--a divine person could become incarnate as a mortal being, which perishes qua that kind of mortal being. But then it is very plausible that another incarnation could follow. And so on.

That leaves premise (3). Here I have two lines of thought. The first is the intuition that since God is outside of time, it really shouldn't matter with respect to possibility whether multiple incarnations are in sequence or simultaneous--in each case, the multiple incarnations create a relationship between a timeless being and several locations of spacetime. The second involves time travel. Suppose that there are two sequential incarnations. Then the rational animal that results from the second incarnation could travel back in time and meet the rational animal that results from the first incarnation, and then there would be two simultaneous incarnations.

Aliens and the Bible

My nine-year-old daughter suggested that the fact that aliens aren't mentioned in the Bible gave us good reason to think there aren't any aliens. I countered that dolphins aren't mentioned in the Bible either. My daughter noted that kangaroos aren't either, but she thought that aliens were the sort of thing that, if they existed, the Bible would mention them. I thought there was something to that idea, but perhaps only a weaker claim can be made: the fact that the Bible doesn't mention aliens gives us a good reason to think that humans aren't going to meet up with them in this life. For if we are going to meet up with them, we would need the sort of ethical guidance that we expect from Scripture.

I don't think this is a very powerful argument against the claim that there will be human-alien contact. After all, as long as the aliens appear to be rational beings subject to moral constraints we have good reason to think that they are in the image and likeness of God just as much as we are, and we can apply Scriptural principles. But I do think, nonetheless, that the silence of Scripture is some evidence against humans meeting up with aliens in this life.

Note added later: I definitely should have included Tradition alongside Scripture. See the comments.

Leviathan

I was once rather amused by an undergraduate in my Philosophy of Love and Sex class who complained that the sexual ethics material we were reading only applied to humans. On that topic, I rather enjoyed this story.

Aliens in the heavenly Jerusalem?

If Christianity is correct, there is at least a moderate probability that there are embodied intelligent persons other than humans. If so, will some of them be in the heavenly Jerusalem, too, available for us to interact with? I think that the value of unity between creatures gives a plausible affirmative argument. Over a finite amount of time, it might make sense that different intelligent species be sequestered, as inter-species communication has many difficulties. But given an infinite amount of time, it seems plausible that such contact would be appropriate. The heavenly choir, thus, may well include an intelligent gas cloud (not literally a gas cloud: a being of body and soul, whose body is composed of a gas cloud) slowly changing colors in a meaningful way, and chatting with St Thomas about divine simplicity.

Of course all such possibilities for wonder pale beside the simple wonder of union with God.