What does our understanding of consciousness entail, exactly? On the surface it is simply scientific progress, a better understanding of our place in the world. But are these questions ones we want to answer? There seems to be something different about these questions compared to our inquiries about the universe.
Take, for example, free will: if we can map out the brain, perhaps we'll be able to understand whether free will is simply a romantic fiction. Do we want to know the answer to this, or is it better to leave this area unexplored? If it turns out that all our decisions can be reproduced by a sufficiently complex, deterministic model of the brain, can we go on blaming thieves and murderers for their wrongdoing?
And what about the sort of artificial intelligence that will arise from this project? If we can map the brain, will we be able to simulate it as well? If we can, the mind-body problem will take on a much more real edge: will this brain have desires, hopes, dreams? Will it have the ability to gain self-awareness? Would it have rights like you or I do? – it doesn't seem that having a body is an ethically important distinction.
Uncharted territory in science has always been unsettling: we are unsure of what we might find, but we press on into the unknown. But what happens when science changes our perception of ourselves, when it gains the ability to create suffering? Could it be that some questions about the brain are best left unexplored?
Sources
NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/science/project-seeks-to-build-map-of-human-brain.html?pagewanted=all)
Economist (http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21573089-ambitious-project-map-brain-works-possibly-too-ambitious-hard)
1 comment:
This is a very interesting blog post in which you raise many important questions about human responsibility and agency.
Regarding your first point, I would take issue with your suggestion that, if BAM turned out to produce a deterministic model of the brain, we would have to have to give up free will as “simply a romantic fiction.” I do not see, however, any reason to think that is true. As a compatibilist, I think that determinism and moral responsibility are compatible with one another. (Indeed, compatibilism is the position held by the majority of philosophers working on the subejct of free will, as evident from this survey here: http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl?affil=Target+faculty&areas0=14&areas_max=1&grain=coarse.) Given how well-justified and fundamental our beliefs about moral responsibility are, it seems that we should not give them up if determinism turn out to be true, but rather reassess whether determinism and moral responsibility are incompatible in the first place. So, we need not fear any potential results from BAM and can comfortably keep our beliefs about moral responsibility.
Regarding your second point, I think you offer some good questions, and I am inclined to agree with you on your suggestion that artificially intelligent beings could have rights since having a biological body does not seem to be relevant to one’s moral status. Nevertheless, the fact that this raises some tough questions does should not deter us from exploring the brain any more than the fact that in vitro fertilization raises some difficult issues should deter us from studying embryology.
Hence, while I can understand your concerns about studying the brain, the potential problems that BAM can cause are relatively small and easily soluble, especially when compared to the great benefits we stand to gain from such an inquiry.
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