With humanoid AI on the horizon, soon the question will be asked more and more: is that robot conscious? The debate has already begun. Some laugh at the question, and answer a resounding “no!”. Others argue that if human brains are made of physical stuff, then why couldn’t this other physical stuff in AI and robots produce consciousness too? But the real problem is, no matter which side you’re on; how can we ever tell if something is consciousness? In animals and even humans, your friends and family, there is no way to know for sure they are conscious. So, here R. D. Hinshelwood asks: is it possible to create a test for consciousness? A Consciousness Test?

This article is a follow-on from the live debate 'The Consciousness Test' that took place at HowTheLightGetsIn 2024.

Is it possible to create a test to discover if a person, animal, computer, or rock is conscious or not? (Ricky Williamson of the Institute of Arts and Ideas).

Can Ricky Williamson’s question ever be answered by a human mind?

If a question is difficult to answer, question the question. This one is notoriously hard, so we should first consider its elements. There are two things; first, what is consciousness? This is a well-known and debated question. And second, what is behind the unassuming word ‘test’? Consciousness becomes a ‘hard’ problem because it is taken as a single entity, but here it will be considered more realistically as having several dimensions and therefore appears different from different perspectives. Testing it is also problematic as it is assumed tests take the form of scientific investigation of the material world, even though the mind and its consciousness(es) is non-material.

This paper is therefore divided into two parts – first on consciousness and self-consciousness; and the second, the issues apparent in testing for it.

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Everything is composed of the mental domain and the material world emerges in the mental. Thus, the mental domain and forms of consciousness are everywhere in the universe.

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Consciousness

Rather simply consciousness can be said to be an awareness of (a) things in the real world via the distance receptors (vision, sound, etc.), and (b) an awareness of things within oneself, typically bodily sensations and one’s feelings. Already there is a distinction between inner and outer. But perhaps this only puts us back one step. What is ‘awareness’ of these things in the external reality or inside our own sensuous bodies?

Chalmers (1996) distinction between the easy and hard problems will not be followed, as it aims to correlate subjective experience with the objective knowledge of brain functioning. The contemporary assumption that brain functions resemble a computer is a slick avoidance as it simplifies every issue by assigning subjective experiences to parts/centres of the brain with their functions and connections. We know instead that the brain operates as a holistic organ producing wave-like activity observed by electro-encephalography (ECG).

What is not solved by this computer-analogy approach, is how awareness fits with the material existence of an organism. I will in this instance, not develop an investigation of rocks as Willimson’s question suggests. However, there is panpsychism which argues in various ways that it is not the material world from which the mental emerges, but the other way around. Everything is composed of the mental domain and the material world emerges in the mental. Thus, the mental domain and forms of consciousness are everywhere in the universe.

What is awareness?