Consciousness is known as “the hard problem” of philosophy—neurology might tell us something of the mechanics of how we experience qualia, how we process phenomena, but it says very little of why. For example, it’s really quite simple to answer how we know a sour taste from a sweet taste—the physical reaction to sour foods, like lemons or spoiled milk, has much to do with an early genetic mutation that selected for an expansive autonomic reaction to alkaloids, which are more often than not quite poisonous.1 The actual step-action sequence of events involved with the pucker and gag reflex are likewise expressible in terms of anatomical movement. But why do we homo sapiens construct elaborate visual imagery and express (in often quite florid language) the sensation of taste? The evolutionary advantage enjoyed from an autonomic reflex to gag and spit out sour foods is mostly undeniable, and we see it across the animal kingdom, not merely in humans. Goats, renowned for eating virtually anything, experience the same reflexive distaste for high alkaloid materials,2 but they do not write odes to lemon trees. In fact, it seems unlikely that other animals contemplate much of anything; and even our closest relatives in the family of Great Apes show no evidence of pondering the meaning of sour lemons (or grapes)—so why have I spent the last several minutes thinking quite specifically about the individual quale of a sour taste? Any basic evolutionary advantage is met with the mentioned reflex simpliciter, so what possible advantage is there to my extended thought on the subject? My physical and unthinking reaction to a sour taste is really quite objective to my thoughts on the matter—said reaction happens, by definition, without contemplation. But my thoughts on the prospect of a sour taste, or my particular delight in the taste of Lemonheads sour candy, is decidedly subjective, and not in terms of mere opinion, but in light of the fact that my singular mental activity, my individual thoughts on the taste sensation of Lemonheads, are internally true only to me (even if similar thoughts are shared by others). Descartes recognized this, yet I think he suffered from the average philosopher’s error: he knew what he wanted to prove and worked toward proving it; oddly enough, he lacked true objectivity in his exploration of reaching objectivity! …show more content…
Descartes championed the notion of working from doubt, and this superficially seems very similar to the scientific process of disproving an hypothesis. But if Descartes had truly wanted to answer the question of viable external objectivity, he ought to have started from the notion of the objective world and worked in toward the subjective understanding. In order to demonstrate what I mean by this, let’s take an example from modern artificial intelligence research. When information and computer science researchers explore the development of an artificial intelligence (AI) it is done so from the large to the small.3 John Searle of UC Berkeley (famous for his theory of the “Chinese Room” Turing Test) argues that an AI is logically built bit-by-bit, but that legitimate self-awareness can only occur as the “spontaneous but gradual” recognition of the AI from “we” to “I”. …show more content…
In this case, “we” is a placeholder for “world”—the AI, lacking direct interaction with a sender (such as a caregiver providing food at supper), will be unable to develop a sense of individual self because it has no relationship data to compare itself against.4 Once such interaction occurs and is recognized, the AI develops a sense of “you” as opposed to “we”; and from this follows the opposite of “you”—“I”. If one were to hear echoes of Heidegger and Marcel at this point, one would not be far off the mark.5 The USAF’s Primate Equilibrium Platform experiments conducted at Brooks AFB in the early 1980s demonstrated that chimpanzees, who are generally considered to have a limited sense of self, could be raised from birth with no significant sender input, and would consequently fail to manifest individuation of psyche.6 Strangely enough, it seems that isolation from birth denies individuality; the individual is only a possibility once others are available against which to contrast personhood. So, does Descartes, working from the inside out, “escape subjectivism”? Very simply, he