1. The Mind is Not the Software of the Brain (Even if the Brain is Computational) Susan Schneider The University of Connecticut

2. Background  In a previous book, I explored the computational paradigm in cognitive science.  I devised a new version of one computational approach to the the brain.

3. Digging Deeper  Metaphysics is a field that studies the ultimate nature of reality.  The Language of Thought was not in metaphysics, but I could see that even if computationalism about the brain was settled, this issue still leaves open a host of issues about the nature of the mind.  For instance, it could turn out that even if everyone agreed on a certain computational approach to the brain, substance dualism is correct.  There could also be other philosophical reasons why the mind is not the brain as well.  The mind could be extended (Clark), or it could be “the software the brain runs” (Block).  The brain’s being computational doesn’t entail a certain position about the mind.  Computationalism, even if correct about the brain, is only the beginning of the philosophical story about the mind…  So: what is the mind?

4. The Plan  Today: Consider a leading approach to the mind in cognitive science, philosophy, and popular culture.  The mind is “the software running on the brain.”  We will learn about its flaws in the context of debates on radical brain enhancement. (This is for an OUP anthology on transhumanism. Templeton immortality project and my Singularity Papers.)  I will then discuss a related “patternist” theory of the self (i.e., personal identity), arguing it is in bad shape too.  I’ll close by making practical recommendations about how to make enhancement decisions (if time allows).

5. The Software Model of the Mind  A dominant view of the nature of the mind in cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and even popular culture is the view “the mind is the software that the brain runs” (Block, Schneider, Piccinnini).  The Software Model of the Mind (SMM)  The mind is the program running on the brain, that is, the algorithm that the brain implements, something in principle discoverable by cognitive science.  Influence in the sciences  Bostrom and Kurzweil are connectionists who adopt a version that is often called, “informational patternism” or just “patternism.”  Transhumanists tend to see patternism as a theory of personal identity, as well as a theory of the mind’s nature.  Note: You can say nothing about personal identiity and advance a software view of mind. (Philosophers of mind tend to be silent about personal identity. That’s a shame, by the way.)  Friendly amendment to (SMM):  Proponents of this view uphold a multiple realizabilty thesis:  Thinking can be realized by both a silicon and carbon-based (i.e., brain based) substrate, and maybe other substrates as well.  So they really mean that the mind is a program that runs on physical hardware, not just the brain (e.g., brains, silicon systems, extended brains).  Is the amended software model plausible?  Let’s consider this in the context of uploading.

6. Flaw in Software Model: The Case of Uploading  Steven Hawking: "I think the brain is like a programme … so it's theoretically possible to copy the brain onto a computer and so provide a form of life after death.”  Nick Bostrom: “Uploading … is the process of transferring an intellect from a biological brain to a computer. One way of doing this might be by first scanning the synaptic structure of a particular brain and then implementing the same computations in an electronic medium... “… Advantages of being an upload would include: Uploads would not be subject to biological senescence. Back-up copies of uploads could be created regularly so that you could be re-booted if something bad happened. (Thus your lifespan would potentially be as long as the universe’s.)... Radical cognitive enhancements would likely be easier to implement in an upload than in an organic brain....A widely accepted position is that you survive so long as certain information patterns are conserved, such as your memories, values, attitudes, and emotional dispositions,...For the continuation of personhood, on this view, it matters little whether you are implemented on a silicon chip inside a computer or in that gray, cheesy lump inside your skull, assuming both implementations are conscious.” (2003c, italics mine)  Uploading is at the very early stages of development. OpenWorm. “Brain Emulation Handbook”-FHI.

7. Would you Upload?  You’ve been training for space flight for years.  NASA asks you to upload to go to Europa!  The technology is perfected, but the uploading is “destructive.”  What are the chances you would genuinely survive, transferring your consciousness from your biological brain to a program?

8. Should You Upload?  Even assuming the technology is precise, capturing every detail of your mental life, there are reasons to believe that the upload would not really be you.  For one thing, your self or mind would have to transfer to a new location, outside your brain, and physical objects do not normally “jump” across spacetime to new locations; they follow a continuous path through space over time.

9. Which is you?  Further, consider an uploading scenario in which your brain survives the scan (as may be the case with more sophisticated uploading procedures).  Suppose your upload is downloaded into an android body that looks just like you, seeming human.  You decide to meet your upload in a bar; as you drink beer with your android double, the two of you debate who is truly the original – who is truly you.  Your upload could argue convincingly that it is you, for it has all your memories and even remembers the beginning of the surgical procedure in which you were scanned.  But is it really plausible that the upload is you? You are sitting right next to it! So why think that you really uploaded in the case of destructive uploading?

10. Could You be in Many Places at Once?  Further, if you really uploaded, you could be downloaded to multiple locations at once. So suppose a hundred copies of you are downloaded.  You would be multiply located, that is, you would be in multiple places at the same time.  Ordinary physical objects don’t work that way. My coffee cup is here; it is not simultaneously on a beach in Brazil.  A physical object can be located in different places at different times, but not at the same time.  We seem to be physical objects of a special sort – we are living beings.  For us to be an exception to general pattern of behavior of macroscopic spatiotemporal objects would be stupendous metaphysical luck.

11. You Can’t Really Be an Upload  Here’s another way to the put issue. We must distinguish two questions:  (i) If someone’s brain is scanned and uploaded, would that upload be the same person as the original, or would it be a replica? That is, is uploading a form of survival?  (ii) If someone’s brain is scanned and uploaded, would the upload be a conscious being?  I believe the answer to the first question is “no”, while the second is “yes, probably.”  If I am right, even if you believe that the brain is computational, you should not upload, at least if your primary motivation is survival.  There will be no uploads who were once human beings; uploads are just digital descendants of biological beings. (See my NYT piece, “The Philosophy of ‘Her’, at my site.)

12. The Software Response  There is a commonplace reaction to my view that we cannot survive uploading:  The Software Response. Uploading the mind is like uploading software. You can upload software and download it to a new location. Software can even be downloaded to multiple locations. locations at once. So perhaps we are not like ordinary physical objects at all – perhaps our minds are instead programs. When a person’s brain is scanned under ideal conditions, the scanning process copies the person’s neural configuration (or their “program” or “informational pattern”). One can survive uploading insofar as one’s pattern survives.  From responses to my position in Big Think, Wired, Humanity+, etc.

13. Problem with the Software Response  Today: dismantle the Software Response and the related Software Model of the Mind.  What is a program?  If the mind is a software program, or relatedly, a pattern of information, it is an abstract entity.  The field of philosophy of mathematics studies the nature of abstract entities like equations, sets and programs. Such are said to be non-concrete: they are not spatial, temporal or causal.  We are not equations or programs. Minds think, and they cause things to happen. They act on things in spacetime, so they are likely spatiotemporal entities.  Further, we can tell we are not abstract. Not only do we cause things to happen, but moments pass for us – we are temporal beings.

14. The Instantiation Reply  You might think there is a way to save the software model along these lines, although it does not suggest that we can survive uploading:  What if the proponent of the software model of the mind held that the mind is not the program but the instantiation of the program?  Instantiations are concrete objects (e.g., computers, brains), not abstract entities.  Would saying this provide a more insightful approach to the self or mind?

15. Instantiation Reply, cont.,  This just begs the question: What is it to be an entity that runs the program/has the pattern?  Virtually any position on the nature of the self or mind is game.  Physicalism? The instantiation view doesn’t entail it.  Perhaps we have immaterial minds/souls?  Panpsychism, idealism.  Extended mind (Clark).  These are important debates to have, but the point is that saying that we are that which runs a program is fairly uninformative.

16. Reply: Non-reductive Physicalism  Response: philosophers of mind intend to combine the software approach with a particular form of physicalism.  Physicalism: everything is ultimately physical.  Nonreductive physicalism (NRP): i. Mental properties (i.e., features) do not reduce to physical ones, but they depend on physical properties. ii. Substance Physicalism. The mind is physical, and all other things (or substances) are as well.  Me: This will not yield a viable approach to the mind.  I’ve argued that NRP is false for two reasons.  (1) Can a physical thing really have a non- physical property, (that is, a property that is not reducible to physical properties)? (Descartes didn’t think so.)  (PI) Any commitment to property irreducibility is incompatible with the view that the mind is a physical thing.  Property irreducibility leads to a form of substance dualism, but not a Cartesian one. (See paper in Nous, at my site.) NRP is false – not a form of physicalism.

17. Second Problem  Fundamental physics is highly mathematical.  Physicalists say everything that exists depends on a group of fundamental physical properties/objects (e.g., bosons, strings).  Mathematical entities (numbers, equations, etc.), identify the fundamental properties.  If something identifies (philosophers: “individuates”) something else, it seems to be part of its nature, unless an argument is given to the contrary.  It looks like mathematical entities are part of the nature of the fundamental physical entities. Bad result.  Physicalist retort: harmless! Nominalism in philosophy of mathematics is true.  Mind dependency, etc.  This leaves Platonism. “Platonistic physicalism.”  Platonism isn’t much of a physicalism. Is a form of dualism! And the concrete world threatens to be unknowable.  This objection is to physicalism in general, not only NRP versions.  (See my “Does the Mathematical Nature of Physics Undermine Physicalism?”, JCS special issue.)

18. Summary  In sum: NRP fails to help the software view.  It is important to distinguish scientific progress on detailing the computational structure of the brain from understanding the essence of the self, person or mind as being a “program.”  While the former view is substantiated with a good deal of research, and is largely an empirical matter, the latter view is philosophical. Minds aren’t software. And the view that the mind is an instantiation of software is not very informative.

19. Transhumanist Reaction  Transhumanism is a cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human capacities.  Reaction: there seems to be something right about patternism as an approach to personal identity. This suggests you are mistaken that it is an impoverished theory of mind.  21st century unenhanced human → significant “upgrading” with cognitive, perceptual and other physical enhancements → posthuman status →“superintelligence”

20. Life’s Journey  Should you embark upon this journey?  Here, there are deep philosophical questions that have no easy answers.  For in order to understand whether you should enhance, you must first understand what you are to begin with.  But what is a person? And, given your conception of a person, after such radical changes, would you yourself continue to exist, or would you have ceased to exist, having been replaced by someone else?  If the latter, why would you want to embark on the path to radical enhancement at all?

21. Trajectory for Enhancement  Now consider the transhumanist’s trajectory for enhancement: for radical enhancement to be a worthwhile option for you, it has to represent a form of personal development.  At bare minimum, even if enhancement brings such goodies as superhuman intelligence and radical life extension, it must not involve the elimination of any of your essential properties.

22. Patternism, Redux  Consider Kurzweil’s observation that from moment to moment the particles in our bodies are changing, and it is plausible that as you read this now, you have few of the same particles in your body that you had when you were born, or even seven years ago.  You’ve survived, you think. So it must be related to the survival of your pattern, you suspect. Plausible?  Patternism is insightful even if software instantiation view is not informative enough.  In light of our earlier discussion, we know we aren’t just a pattern (that’s abstract).  Amended Patternism:  You are a continuous spatiotemporal pattern of information.  Remember: this rules out uploading.  Other forms of brain enhancement, even silicon-based enhancements, may be compatible with your survival though.

23. Problem Space  I argue:  1. Amended Patternism is not informative about middle range enhancements.  2. It has several plausible competitors that we are not in a good epistemic position to rule out.  Some scenarios:

24. Case One: Shifts in Pattern  Assume Amended Patternism.  Consider: if you are your pattern, what if your pattern shifts? Do you die?  In order for the transhumanist to justify the sort of enhancements needed to become a posthuman or a superintelligent being, she will need to say precisely what a “pattern” is, and when enhancements do and do not constitute a continuation of the pattern.

25. Case One: Pattern Shifts  The extreme cases seem clear – e.g., you shouldn’t upload.  And further, because amended patternism is akin to a psychological continuity view, the patternist will want to say that a memory erasure process that erased one’s childhood is an unacceptable alteration of one’s pattern, removing too many memories.  On the other hand, mere everyday cellular maintenance by nanobots to overcome the slow effects of aging would, according to proponents of this view, not affect the identity of the person.  But the middle range cases are unclear. Maybe deleting a few bad chess playing habits is kosher, but what about erasing all memory of some personal relationship, as in the film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?  The path to superintelligence may very well be a path through middle range enhancements.  So again, what is needed is a clear conception of what a pattern is, and what changes in pattern are acceptable and why.  Without a firm handle on this issue, the transhumanist developmental trajectory is perhaps the technophile’s alluring path to suicide.

26. Case One: Pattern Shifts  This problem looks hard to solve in a way that is compatible with preserving the very idea that we can be identical over time to some previous or future self.  For determining a boundary point seems a rather arbitrary exercise in which once a boundary is selected, an example is provided suggesting the boundary should be pushed outward, ad nauseum.  On the other hand, there is something insightful about the view that over time one gradually becomes less and less like one’s earlier self.  But appreciate this point too long and it may lead to a dark place: for if one finds Patternism compelling to begin with, how is it that one truly persists over time, from the point of infancy until maturity, during which time there are often major changes in one’s memories, personality, and so on?  Indeed, even a series of gradual changes cumulatively amounts to an individual, B, who is greatly altered from her childhood self, A. Why is there really a relation of identity that holds between A and B, instead of an ancestral relation: A’s being the ancestor of B? (No self view. Hughes, Parfit, Nietzsche)

27. Case Two: Reading the NY Times  Suppose scientists gradually exchange each of the neurons in your brain for silicon-based artificial neurons over the course of an hour. There is then an artificial brain that is computationally identical to the original (Lowe/Plantinga).  Did you survive?  Amended Patternism: Yes.  Consider alternate answers:  1. You survive, but you aren’t a pattern, you are a non-physical self (Lowe).

28. Case Two: Reading the paper.  2. There is no self and no survival.  3. The fleeting self view. A situation in which there is only a temporal sequence of momentary beings, threaded together by spacetime.  (Even if we call these beings “persons”, resisting a full eliminativism about the self, there is no survival on 3.)

29. Provisional Assessment  We can’t determine introspectively or from neuroscience or physics which of the competing identity principles is correct, if any.  Elsewhere, I’ve avoided appeal to intuition, suggesting that a more secure strategy involves ruling out metaphysical theories as incoherent.  But I do not believe that the amended patternist proposal, substance dualism, the fleeting self proposal, or the no self view finds itself in tension with other key metaphysical principles that proponents each view hold dear.  There may be differences in ontological economy.  Why do we believe ontological economy is a good rule of thumb?  At best, ontological economy is subtle. Depends on one’s entire ontological scheme, and it is difficult to defend an entire ontological scheme.  How can ordinary people make the right enhancement decisions, let alone philosophers?

30. Pragmatic Framework 1. When enhancement decisions result in survival according to all versions of personal identity principles you regard as plausible, this is a good thing, especially when the alternative is death. You’re golden. 2. Unless it is the only way to survive, stick to enhancements that do not involve rapid changes in your pattern. 3. In general, take the most conservative enhancement approach compatible with not dying. E.g., stick to biological enhancements, especially if the enhancements are to areas of the brain in which consciousness is involved. (You could become a zombie!) Biological naturalism can’t be definitively ruled out. 4. Different principles, each of which is metaphysically coherent, are compatible with all the physical facts about the universe. 5. Creatures that aren’t numerically identical will insist they are! Zombies will insist they are conscious! Ignore the experiences of the enhanced. 6. Factor in the possibility that there is no survival. How can you best benefit your “descendent” and others? 7. It helps to consider each principle’s inconsistencies, including whether it is in tension with key metaphysical positions that it probably needs (e.g., theories of substance). 8. Of the consistent views, one may stand out as most economical, but bear in mind that economy is not a sure bet. (Do you want your life to hang on it?) 9. Because the mind is closely related to the self, considering theories of the nature of mind may help.E.g., panpsychism makes biological naturalism less plausible. (Not enough contact between answers to the mind-body problem and theories of personal identity). 10. Anyway, there is one thing we can say: The mind is not the software of the brain.

31. Thanks!