PHILONOUS Hello, Hylas. You’re walking so fast through the park, I could barely catch up with you. Where were you yesterday? We were supposed to discuss that gem of knowledge that is cybernetics, remember?
HYLAS You have no idea, my friend, into what confusion you threw me with your last argument. To make it worse, my philosopher friends are saying that your real purpose was to bring back irrationalism and undermine our faith in the cognitive power of the human mind and everything you said at the end (they say) was just to cover it up.
PHILONOUS What am I hearing?
HYLAS Really. Therefore, I decided not to share your conclusion with others, but to condemn it to oblivion instead. You must agree that your whole argument was completely negative. It only prohibited and sowed anxiety and doubts, offering no new, progressive idea.
PHILONOUS Is that so? Well, my friend, let us think about it. But first, allow me to tell you a story. A long time ago, on a fertile plain, there lived a tribe in which some practiced hunting and herding, while others, fewer in number, strived to understand the world in which they lived, which is only human nature. One of these strivers, smarter than the rest, noticed one day that when he stood in the center of the plain, he saw only objects within two thousand steps; everything beyond that, whether it was a tree, a shack, or a person, disappeared so thoroughly as if it had never existed. He told others about it. They were unaware of this phenomenon, not having his sharpness of vision, but now, straining their eyes, they had to agree. Giving this some thought, they said to him: “Brother, you are right. However, your discovery may have dire consequences. It will raise a widespread impression that people and things that cross the limit of two thousand steps from our settlement get snatched away by dark forces, whereby it will promote believing in ghosts and similar dangerous superstitions. Let us therefore keep it from the public and forget it. You must agree that it only creates anxiety, sows uncertainty, and foments negativity, offering no new, positive idea and certainly not promoting progress.” What do you think, Hylas, of this story? By the way, you surely guessed the real mechanism behind that discovered phenomenon . . .
HYLAS Of course. We do not see distant objects because they are hidden from our view by the curvature of the Earth.
PHILONOUS Correct. But the tribe did not know that Earth was round, and the first person who had the first hunch of it knew it, so to say, only in the form of a specific prohibition: that it is impossible to see distant objects.
HYLAS You are saying, then, that your argument, in parallel with the story, also contains a rational, positive morsel of knowledge?
PHILONOUS That’s exactly what I’m saying.
HYLAS Just convince me of this, and I will be the first to spread your argument to the world. What truth in it is equivalent to the curvature of the Earth in the parable?
PHILONOUS Unfortunately, I don’t know, just as the tribe’s discoverer did not know. It often happens that the advancing human mind stumbles on a truth precisely by way of an uncertainty, a doubt, or an inability to do something.
HYLAS So you have nothing to tell me?
PHILONOUS But I do. Let me first recapitulate the argument. As you may remember, we were considering whether or not it is possible to resurrect a person by perfectly reconstructing his body from atoms and making a copy true to the original in every aspect. This assumption led to a contradiction, so we had to reject it. If I understand correctly, you want to know why this happened.
HYLAS Yes. I also want to know whether or not a person’s resurrection from atoms is possible and if not, why.
PHILONOUS Then let us begin with that very question. First, we have to construct an exact map of all the atoms in the person’s body, right?
HYLAS That is obvious.
PHILONOUS Obvious, yes, but is it doable? What does physics say? Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, fundamental to modern physics, says that we can locate an individual atom only in approximation: the atom’s image is not a dot but a fuzzy spot, like an image on a photographic plate that moved during the exposure. For us, it is essential that the impossibility of precise location stems not from the technological inadequacy of the measuring apparatus but from a fundamental fact, a manifestation of the properties of the atom itself, which does not occupy space in the same way that macroscopic objects do in our everyday surroundings. If we cannot precisely pin down an atom, then we cannot draw an exact map of the atoms in an organism. From this the impossibility of creating an identical copy of a living person follows, quod erat demonstrandum. Are you now satisfied?
HYLAS Not at all. Even if the uncertainty principle invalidates the goal of creating an exact copy of an organism, the difficulty is just technical, but we are considering the gnoseological, philosophical side of the issue.
PHILONOUS Not so, Hylas. What you call “a technical difficulty” is in fact an integral, what’s more, fundamental feature of the real world of atoms. Heisenberg’s principle implies a specific “prohibition”: it forbids the precise measurement of an atom. This “prohibition” is not an obstacle on our path to knowledge but instead an element of that knowledge. In the same way, the “prohibition” to see distant objects is no “technical difficulty” but instead a manifestation of a specific feature of the world, namely, that Earth is spherical. If the tribe’s philosophers try to understand the geometry of their planet assuming that it is flat, they will inevitably come to contradictions and absurdities, just as we did. Heisenberg’s principle does not exist as a kind of “prohibition” against making precise measurements at the atomic level. What we have inferred from countless observations and eventually formulated as a principle with that name is simply an inherent characteristic of the atoms themselves, which today we know only in the guise of this “impossibility.” If atoms were not such complex objects manifesting traits as unique as the uncertainty principle but, say, tiny hard balls, our world would probably look completely different, and very likely it would not give rise to living systems or the neuronal structures that constitute the substrate of mental processes.
HYLAS I don’t understand. Are you telling me that the uncertainty principle is the very property of atoms that enables them to bond into systems such that life and consciousness emerge?
PHILONOUS I wouldn’t go that far. Look, it is the roundness of the Earth that makes the objects beyond the horizon disappear, true?
HYLAS True.
PHILONOUS The roundness also makes it possible for us to circumnavigate the globe and return to our point of departure, right?
HYLAS Obviously.
PHILONOUS But can we say that it is the disappearance of the objects beyond the horizon that makes it possible for us to circumnavigate the globe? No. Both these facts obtain because the Earth is a sphere, but there is no causal link between them. Now, the uncertainty principle is a manifestation of a specific property of atoms. Mental processes ultimately also derive from the properties of atoms. Only the future will tell what those fundamental properties are that enable both of these phenomena. Most probably the answer will not be as simple as in my story; rather, a whole chain of intermediate links, processes, and problems whose connection with what we discussed today no one even suspects will be drawn into the orbit of this issue.
HYLAS For example?
PHILONOUS That I do not know. I am not a prophet.
HYLAS What you said reminds me of the often repeated claim that the uncertainty principle is a manifestation of the atom’s “free will,” from which allegedly the “free will” of human beings sprang.
PHILONOUS The uncertainty principle does not represent an atom’s “free will.” This is a common misuse of language. I do imagine that there is a link between the properties of an atom and the emergence of consciousness, but I reject any such shallow and vulgar explanation of that link. The working of an electronic brain is indeed marked by the clarity of the reasoning process in the sense that the electronic brain functions correctly, logically, and without equivocation. In machines, such “thought” processes are represented by the flow of current through their electrical circuits. Lightning, which produces bright light, is an electrical phenomenon too. But to claim that the “brightness” of an electronic brain’s reasoning derives from the “brightness” of the lightning would be utter nonsense—even though a link exists between the two, in electricity. A transfer of the uncertainty principle into mental processes in the manner that you mentioned is the same kind of nonsense. Such cheap and superficial analogies can be spawned en masse, and indeed are—by various metaphysically inclined know-it-alls, who just happen to practice atomistics instead of “mystics.” But I digress. Have I convinced you of the impossibility of resurrection from atoms?
HYLAS No.
PHILONOUS Why not?
HYLAS Perhaps Heisenberg’s principle indeed rules out the atomic reconstruction of a dead organism. But it never entered our discussion, and therefore cannot possibly cause a contradiction in the course of our argument, don’t you agree?
PHILONOUS I do not. Dear Hylas, we did take the principle into account implicitly, when we improperly declared it invalid, and then it took revenge upon us.
HYLAS I do not recall that it ever came up.
PHILONOUS When we spoke about the copying process, we said that the atoms of the copy had to occupy the exact same positions as those in the body of the “original,” right?
HYLAS Yes.
PHILONOUS Atomos, as you know, means “indivisible.” Because atoms can be split (and with quite a dramatic effect), this term is now obsolete. Physicists might give atoms a new name, for example, “unlocalizables,” that would better correspond with reality. So what did you and I do? We said, in effect, “The machine will place the unlocalizables into the copy. . . .” As you can see, we performed a self-contradictory, disallowed operation, which has no equivalent in the real world, at the very beginning of our argument. Is my explanation sufficient now?
HYLAS No. In my opinion the mystery and doubts that arose in our argument cannot all be attributed to that initial erroneous operation. It is well known that in specific circumstances we can create exact copies of atomic structures, for example, in the synthesis of simple protein molecules, which do not differ (structurally) from the originals. Perhaps those minuscule imprecisions of measurement, which the uncertainty principle warrants, are no obstacle in the creation of a copy of a living system. Nature, after all, can make copies of organisms that are incredibly similar—identical twins, for example. When people learn to do the same, they will encounter all the problems we have discussed here.
PHILONOUS Nature makes facsimiles, just as we do (e.g., the protein molecules you referred to). However, the absolutely identical localization of atoms makes something that is more than a facsimile, and the mystery of the emergence of mental processes in certain structures may lie precisely in this difference. But, as I said before, I am not entirely sure what truth resides in the core of my argument, and the issue of Heisenberg’s relation, to which I pointed here, is just one possibility. There are others.
HYLAS I would love to hear about those other possibilities.
PHILONOUS Of one thing I am sure, Hylas: the “prohibition” on which we have stumbled, against the resurrection of a dead person from atoms, is a signal that we are using the notions of atoms and consciousness incorrectly, at variance with their true meaning. I already alerted you to the danger of applying the concept of atoms carelessly. It is possible that we have been equally careless about consciousness. A fundamental feature of consciousness is the subjective sense of its duration. Death causes a break in the thread of time, and once that thread is broken, it may not be possible to pick up the ends and reconnect them.
HYLAS Why? Isn’t the thread interrupted in those who fall asleep or who temporarily die on the operating table (so-called clinical death)? We did mention those examples in our discussion.
PHILONOUS When going to bed, many people can decide in advance, and with success, when they will wake. So even as they sleep like a log, completely unconscious, the processes that count time must still be running in their brain. In clinical death too, the brain is active; electrical currents persist in the cortex and can be measured. So the fundamental brain processes continue in both cases and shut down and disintegrate with time only gradually, section after section. This breakdown is reversible up to a limit. When certain atomic structures in the brain suffer excessive damage and are disconnected, even the most basic processes break down and real death replaces clinical death. Only then can we say that subjective time has stopped. Perhaps its thread cannot be renewed for reasons that we do not know today, reasons that may be as fundamental as the one that precludes any body from reaching the speed of light. The latter reason was revealed in the theory of relativity, but consciousness is still awaiting its Einstein.
HYLAS What you say smacks of sophistry. You are pulling down what you built with your own hands, without offering any new, positive ideas, which this reductio ad absurdum was supposed to contain.
PHILONOUS I am not pulling down anything, Hylas, I am simply considering. Other factors may play a role too. Let me add just two. First, remember the question of whether or not the consciousness of the person reconstructed from atoms is the same as that of the deceased—in other words, whether or not it is the same person. We could answer this question only by interrogating and observing the person, but in principle one should strive for a solution that is objective, requiring nobody’s testimony. For that purpose, one needs to be able to see and examine his consciousness directly, find a “direct link” to it, without the reliance on verbal pronouncements of the research subject.
HYLAS But that is impossible.
PHILONOUS How do you know?
HYLAS Only the possessor of a consciousness has a “direct link” to it. Looking into a person’s skull, you will see his brain but not his mind.
PHILONOUS I am going to show certain indications suggesting that in the future we will be able to make these “direct links” into the consciousness of another person.
HYLAS Impossible! One cannot be oneself and simultaneously someone else, which linking directly to another’s consciousness would mean.
PHILONOUS So you cannot be in one place and simultaneously in another?
HYLAS No.
PHILONOUS Not when you are projected by a camera?
HYLAS That’s different.
PHILONOUS Well, let us see if I can convince you.
HYLAS I am all ears.
PHILONOUS First, you must tell me whether or not you accept my conclusion regarding resurrection.
HYLAS I do not.
PHILONOUS And why not?
HYLAS I still do not see the source of the contradiction and still do not know if it is possible or not to resurrect a person from atoms.
PHILONOUS What a disappointment! I’ve been telling you for an hour that I also don’t know it for sure but I offered several possible solutions. And I have one more, which I have not mentioned yet. Suppose someone is dying, and two exact copies of him step out of the machine together. Which one is his continuation? It turns out that mere reasoning cannot answer this question, because reasoning follows formal logic, which disallows equations of the type A = 2A, labeling them “contradictory.” But in our example, A = 2A indeed seems to be the case, and a “multiplication of personality” has occurred. Perhaps one needs to apply a multivalued logic instead, which does not exclude the middle. At any rate, you can see that the impossibility of a solution could result not only from improper definitions of the starting terms (“atoms,” “consciousness”) but also from the employment of inappropriate reasoning tools (i.e., the logical system).
HYLAS I see now that you are not attacking rationalism. Yet . . .
PHILONOUS Yet what?
HYLAS I feel sorry for your previous argument. It sounded so convincing, clear, simple, but now turns out to have been a mistake.
PHILONOUS Not at all. It served its purpose—indicating the presence of something unknown. It pointed to hidden mysteries lurking where we thought there was certainty and everything was known. Is it not enough? In response, we need not close our eyes or sprinkle it with holy water and call it an argument in favor of irrationalism. Instead, we should address it, study it, and improve our knowledge about atoms and the processes of life and mind to the point where we will become able to tackle the resurrection problem with the objective tools. As you will see, cybernetics, or rather some of its consequences, opens the door to this.
HYLAS I have a feeling, my friend, that you might be the awaited Einstein of consciousness . . .
PHILONOUS Not at all, Hylas. There is a very long way from forming a question to finding the answer. I am just trying to formulate the question properly.
HYLAS And can you tell me what the question is?
PHILONOUS Sure, but not today. We will meet tomorrow. But my argument, is it now clear to you?
HYLAS No.
PHILONOUS Well, nor is it to me—but I think this is a good thing. A person who believes he knows and understands everything and sees no mystery is often on the path to peril.