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bute to aspects of our experience such as facial ments, it would do this whether the monitor was
recognition, name recognition, or distance per- on or not. Consequently, the mere observation
ception. We know something about how speech of self-regulatory behavior in any system does
is transduced and then the resulting neural im- not prove intentionality or awareness. All cy-
pulses are routed to different brain areas resul- bernetic systems have reciprocal self-response
ted in discrete aspects of auditory perception. capabilities, whether they are living organisms
Yet it is not clear how all of these discrete activa- or mechanical devices. A simple thermostat
tions are ever reunited into a molar gestalt field functions cybernetically in this way. It monitors
that is one integrated consciousness including temperature and if the air temperature deviates
speech, sound, meaning, narrative location, from a set point it will trigger a heater to turn
etc. This is known as the “binding problem”. It on or off as needed to maintain the temperature.
is as if the body is equipped to break the world But few would suggest such mechanical devices
down into a neural code in an analogous way are aware of their cybernetic processes or states
to how a web camera converts photo-acoustic simply because of this reciprocal self-response
energy into digital information. But in the case loop. How would there be anyone home in such
of the brain, there does not seem to be a moni- a device?
tor connected to the systems. There is no clear Searle‘s (1980) Chinese room thought experi-
structure or connected process that is home ment challenges the notion that artificially in-
to a unified and re-integrated field that just is telligent systems could ever be truly conscious.
our wholistic, unified perception. We can and In this thought experiment, a person works
have used computer programs and imaging in a windowless room with the job of writing
technology to begin to reconstruct the brain’s Chinese characters on output cards in response
code and allow us to see on a computer screen to Chinese characters on input cards received
what the person is perceiving. But as of yet, how through a slot. The person in the room does not
the brain itself does this full reconstruction to understand any of the Chinese characters but
produce a holistic, unified phenomenal field re- has a rule book so well designed that it shows
mains as mysterious as ever. There simply does what characters to write for any particular input
not appear to be a brain network or system that sequence. If the rulebook was so well develo-
accomplishes the full binding job required to ped that the output convinced the Chinese re-
explain the „consciousness screen“ self-evident cipient that their meaning was understood and
to human perceivers. meaningful responses were given, the characters
Even if a consciousness screen were to be iden- received or written would still have no meaning
tified in the brain it is not at all clear that we for the person inside the box. The person in
would be closer to explaining the hard problem the room would only be following syntactical-
of consciousness. We would still need to show structural rules and what they perceived as the
how having a conscious screen explains the inputs or the outputs during the transaction
first-person awareness we experience. Whence would be devoid of semantic meaning for them.
arises the conscious screener? -a person who is Searle claims this illustrates what happens with
consciously aware of the phenomenal field pre- AI‘s and thus suggests that no matter how so-
sent in the screen. The situation is analogous phisticated their programming they will never
to a computer monitor playing a reconstructed have subjective meaning in their operations.
image from signals sent to it by the computer Scholars such as Chalmers (2016) and Nagels
with a camera attached while no one is there to (2012) have given up hope that the hard pro-
watch it. It is irrelevant for this problem if the blems of consciousness can be solved through
computer is doing something with the informa- reductive naturalism. In Chalmer’s (2016) case,
tion it receives from a camera or other type of he has increasingly defended a form of panpsy-
input device. If the computer was programed chism: “the thesis that some fundamental phy-
to run various operations such as making one‘s sical entities are conscious: that is, that there is
breakfast by a certain time of day utilizing en- something it is like to be a quark or a photon or
vironmental input sensors and robotic attach- a member of some other fundamental physical

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