the myth of the consciometer
This article over at Slate... it's not so good:
Sometime in the next decade or so, neuroscientists will likely identify the specific neural networks and activity that generate the vague but vital thing we call consciousness. Delineating the infrastructure of awareness is biology's most difficult problem, but a leading researcher like Christof Koch, Gerald Edelman, or Stanislas Dehaene could soon solve it. Science will then possess what might be called a "consciometer" — a set of tests (probably an advanced version of a brain scan or EEG) that can measure consciousness the way kidney or lung function is now measured.
The author, a guy named David Dobbs, goes on to rhapsodize about the revolutionary impact the consciometer will have on the abortion debate and living will decisions.
I've written the word "consciometer" before. It's a nice rhetorical device when talking about these kinds of things. But this is a pretty stupid article.
Let's lay aside the laughable EEG nonsense, and the impossibly vague "brainscan". The worst part: the ten year prediction. David, You can't just wave your hands and make it so. People have been working on this problem a lot longer than that. But consciousness is ineffable, and it should be obvious to anyone who thinks about the problem for more than a moment that measuring consciousness can't be compared to measuring kidney function.
Kidneys can be experimented upon in animals. But animals can't talk, so we don't have even that imperfect method for determining if they're conscious. Kidneys live in a complicated but accessible system of cause and effect within which we can formulate and test hypotheses. We know that, say, LSD affects consciousness, but no one has ever come close to being able to predict what influence a subtle difference in its structure would have on its subjective effects.
You can measure what kidneys do -- but what does consciousness do?
One could also go on about zombies and qualia; whether the just-correlation-based evidence that's available in the field is sufficient for such important considerations; and the inevitably limited temporal and spatial resolution of the advanced neuroimaging tools that seem likely to be the key to a potential consciometer -- but what's the point? We can argue about that stuff when there's a remote hint of this technology existing -- and I'm afraid we're in for a bit of a wait. While I'm optimistic about the biological underpinnings of consciousness someday being identified, Dobbs is getting waaaaaay ahead of himself. I'm glad to see people like Christof Koch chasing these problems aggressively, but I'll count myself lucky if he or anyone else figures this stuff out in my lifetime.
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