What I appreciate about Westworld is that it takes seriously a non-reductionist theory of mind and consciousness.
I am not arguing here about determinism or the lack thereof. That is an entirely different discussion.
Reductionist explanations of consciousness will never produce much because it is not a reducible phenomenon. The totality of integration of systems is what matters, not necessarily the constituent systems themselves. My question is, can undifferentiable physical configurations of more basic elements (particles, sodium ions, neurons) produce inequivalent context-dependent thoughts?
If so, how? If not, why not?
My suspicion is that undifferentiable physical states can produce incommensurate thoughts in the same mind, but my rational mind tells me that this does not make sense in the context of the possibly-deterministic nature of the universe.
Perhaps this is something that can never be tested. And perhaps it is meaningless.
There is no threshold that makes us greater than the sum of our parts, no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can’t define consciousness because consciousness does not exist. Humans fancy that there’s something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet we live in loops, as tight and as closed as the hosts do, seldom questioning our choices, content, for the most part, to be told what to do next. No, my friend, you’re not missing anything at all.
That’s Ford, from Westworld. I agree that there is no threshold for consciousness. But I don’t agree that that means it has no existence. There is no threshold for a mountain, either, and yet there they are.
Without language, is a human conscious? Yes. But less so I’d argue. Without an interior ever-recursive monologue, there is something missing.
Part of Westworld (as befitting Julian Jaynes’ book from which it takes many cues) is the quest of some rogue elements to give the hosts an interior monologue to make them truly human.
There is both more and less to consciousness than anyone realizes. Many scientists wish to deny it exists or that it matters because it can’t be measured (empirical foot-shooting). And many non-scientists want to ascribe to it some sort of magical acausal super-homunculus power that it just cannot possess.
The truth is both more mundane and more magnificent than either of those ridiculous alternatives, I suspect. It’s that consciousness is a continuum, cannot be captured with scientific instruments in most respects but is still of this world, with some occasional sharper jumps. Westworld is about one of those leaps from the imitation of humanity to humanity — and what’s beyond it.