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Qualia, Alienation, and the Brain’s Mental Simulations
A critique of Joscha Bach’s computational theory of consciousness
It’s tempting to think that computer scientists and software engineers solved the hard problem of consciousness simply by building computers.
To understand what consciousness is, we need merely to look at how software runs on those devices. Our minds run our bodies as software runs on hardware. Mystery solved; case closed.
Yet the relevance of this computational theory of mind to consciousness isn’t so clear-cut.
The conscious self as software
The computer scientist Joscha Bach summarizes the computational case in an interview with The Institute of Art and Ideas.
Consciousness, he says, is a meta-perception involving self-awareness that always seems to be happening “in a bubble of nowness that we inhabit.” “Consciousness is basically an operator our mind is discovering that increases coherence.” That is, consciousness is a “learning algorithm” that combines all our models, assumptions, interests, and so on, and supplies a consensus that spans our memories, so “we create an area in the mind that is without contradictions.” As we edit our memories over time, we might land ourselves in contradictions…
