The Ethics Blog

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Tag: neuroscience (Page 1 of 5)

A way out of the Babylonian confusion of tongues in the theorizing of consciousness?

Dictionary "Collaborate", Image by Dianne Hope from Pixabay
16 April, 2024 / / 1 Comment

There is today a wide range of competing theories, each in its own way trying to account for consciousness in neurobiological terms. Parallel to the “Babylonian confusion of tongues” and inability to collaborate that this entails in the theorizing of consciousness, progress has been made in the empirical study of the brain. Advanced methods for imaging and measuring the brain and its activities map structures and functions that are possibly relevant for consciousness. The problem is that these empirical data once again inspire a wide range of theories about the place of consciousness in the brain.

It has been pointed out that a fragmented intellectual state such as this, where competing schools of thought advocate their own theories based on their own starting points – with no common framework or paradigm within which the proposals can be compared and assessed – is typical of a pre-scientific stage of a possibly nascent science. Given that the divergent theories each claim scientific status, this is of course troubling. But maybe the theories are not as divergent as they seem?

It has been suggested that several of the theories, upon closer analysis, possibly share certain fundamental ideas about consciousness, which could form the basis of a future unified theory. Today I want to recommend an article that self-critically examines this hope for a way out of the Babylonian confusion. If the pursuit of a unified theory of consciousness is not to degenerate into a kind of “manufactured uniformity,” we must first establish that the theories being integrated are indeed comparable in relevant respects. But can we identify such common denominators among the competing theories, which could support the development of an overarching framework for scientific research? That is the question that Kathinka Evers, Michele Farisco and Cyriel Pennartz investigate for some of the most debated neuroscientifically oriented theories of consciousness.

What do the authors conclude? Something surprising! They come to the conclusion that it is actually quite possible to identify a number of common denominators, which show patterns of similarities and differences among the theories, but that this is still not the way to an overall theory of consciousness that supports hypotheses that can be tested experimentally. Why? Partly because the common denominators, such as “information,” are sometimes too general to function as core concepts in research specifically about consciousness. Partly because theories that have common denominators can, after all, be conceptually very different.

The authors therefore suggest, as I understand them, that a more practicable approach could be to develop a common methodological approach to testing hypotheses about relationships between consciousness and the brain. It is perhaps only in the empirical workshop, open to the unexpected, so to speak, that a scientific framework, or paradigm, can possibly begin to take shape. Not by deliberately formulating unified theory based on the identification of common denominators among competing theories, which risks manufacturing a facade of uniformity.

The article is written in a philosophically open-minded spirit, without ties to specific theories. It can thereby stimulate the creative collaboration that has so far been inhibited by self-absorbed competition between schools of thought. Read the article here: Assessing the commensurability of theories of consciousness: On the usefulness of common denominators in differentiating, integrating and testing hypotheses.

I would like to conclude by mentioning an easily neglected aspect of how scientific paradigms work (according to Thomas Kuhn). A paradigm does not only generate possible explanations of phenomena. It also generates the problems that researchers try to solve within the paradigm. Quantum mechanics and evolutionary biology enabled new questions that made nature problematic in new explorable ways. A possible future paradigm for scientific consciousness research would, if this is correct, not answer the questions about consciousness that baffle us today (at least not without first reinterpreting them). Rather, it would create new, as yet unasked questions, which are explorable within the paradigm that generates them.

The authors of the article may therefore be right that the most fruitful thing at the moment is to ask probing questions that help us delineate what actually lends itself to investigation, rather than to start by manufacturing overall theoretical uniformity. The latter approach would possibly put the cart before the horse.

Pär Segerdahl

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Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

K. Evers, M. Farisco, C.M.A. Pennartz, “Assessing the commensurability of theories of consciousness: On the usefulness of common denominators in differentiating, integrating and testing hypotheses,” Consciousness and Cognition, Volume 119, 2024,

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A strategy for a balanced discussion of conscious AI

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9 April, 2024 / / 2 Comments

Science and technology advance so rapidly that it is hard to keep up with them. This is true not only for the general public, but also for the scientists themselves and for scholars from fields like ethics and regulation, who find it increasingly difficult to predict what will come next. Today AI is among the most advanced scientific endeavors, raising both significant expectations and more or less exaggerated worries. This is mainly due to the fact that AI is a concept so emotionally, socially, and politically charged as to make a balanced evaluation very difficult. It is even more so when capacities and features that are considered almost uniquely human, or at least shared with a limited number of other animals, are attributed to AI. This is the case with consciousness.

Recently, there has been a lively debate about the possibility of developing conscious AI. What are the reasons for this great interest? I think it has to do with the mentioned rapid advances in science and technology, as well as new intersections between different disciplines. Specifically, I think that three factors play an important role: the significant advancement in understanding the cerebral bases of conscious perception, the impressive achievements of AI technologies, and the increasing interaction between neuroscience and AI. The latter factor, in particular, resulted in so-called brain-inspired AI, a form of AI that is explicitly modeled on our brains.

This growing interest in conscious AI cannot ignore certain risks of varying relevance, including theoretical, practical, and ethical relevance. Theoretically, there is not a shared, overarching theory or definition of consciousness. Discussions about what consciousness is, what the criteria for a good scientific theory should be, and how to compare the various proposed theories of consciousness are still open and difficult to resolve.

Practically, the challenge is how to identify conscious systems. In other words, what are the indicators that reliably indicate whether a system, either biological or artificial, is conscious?

Finally, at the ethical level several issues arise. Here the discussion is very lively, with some calling for an international moratorium on all attempts to build artificial consciousness. This extreme position is motivated by the need for avoiding any form of suffering, including possibly undetectable artificial forms of suffering. Others question the very reason for working towards conscious AI: why should we open another, likely riskier box, when society cannot really handle the impact of AI, as illustrated by Large Language Models? For instance, chatbots like ChatGPT show an impressive capacity to interact with humans through natural language, which creates a strong feeling that these AI systems have features like consciousness, intentionality, and agency, among others. This attribution of human qualities to AI eventually impacts the way we think about it, including how much weight and value we give to the answers that these chatbots provide.

The two arguments above illustrate possible ethical concerns that can be raised against the development of conscious artificial systems. Yet are the concerns justified? In a recent chapter, I propose a change in the underlying approach to the issue of artificial consciousness. This is to avoid the risk of vague and not sufficiently multidimensional analyses. My point is that consciousness is not a unified, abstract entity, but rather like a prism, which includes different dimensions that could possibly have different levels. Based on a multidimensional view of consciousness, in a previous paper I contributed a list of indicators that are relevant also for identifying consciousness in artificial systems. In principle, it is possible that AI can manifest some dimensions of consciousness (for instance, those related to sophisticated cognitive tasks) while lacking others (for instance, those related to emotional or social tasks). In this way, the indicators provide not only a practical tool for identifying conscious systems, but also an ethical tool to make the discussion on possible conscious AI more balanced and realistic. The question whether some AI is conscious or not cannot be considered a yes/no question: there are several nuances that make the answer more complex.

Indeed, the indicators mentioned above are affected by a number of limitations, including the fact that they are developed for humans and animals, not specifically for AI. For this reason, research is still ongoing on how to adapt these indicators or possibly develop new indicators specific for AI. If you want to read more, you can find my chapter here: The ethical implications of indicators of consciousness in artificial systems.

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Michele Farisco, Postdoc Researcher at Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics, working in the EU Flagship Human Brain Project.

Michele Farisco. The ethical implications of indicators of consciousness in artificial systems. Developments in Neuroethics and Bioethics. Available online 1 March 2024. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.dnb.2024.02.009

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Neuroethics: don’t let the name fool you

Brain growing out of a tree, illustration by Gugacurado on Pixabay
14 November, 2023 / / 1 Comment

Names easily give the impression that the named is something separate and autonomous: something to which you can attach a label. If you want to launch something and get attention – “here is something completely new to reckon with” – it is therefore a good idea to immediately create a new name that spreads the image of something very special.

Despite this, names usually lag behind what they designate. The named has already taken shape, without anyone noticing it as anything special. In the freedom from a distinctive designation, roots have had time to spread and branches to stretch far. Since everything that is given freedom to grow is not separate and autonomous, but rooted, interwoven and in exchange with its surroundings, humans eventually notice it as something interesting and therefore give it a special name. New names can thus give a misleading image of the named as newer and more separate and autonomous than it actually is. When the name arrives, almost everything is already prepared in the surroundings.

In an open peer commentary in the journal AJOB Neuroscience, Kathinka Evers, Manuel Guerrero and Michele Farisco develop a similar line of reasoning about neuroethics. They comment on an article published in the same issue that presents neuroethics as a new field only 15 years old. The authors of the article are concerned by the still unfinished and isolated nature of the field and therefore launch a vision of a “translational neuroethics,” which should resemble that tree that has had time to grow together with its surroundings. In the vision, the new version of neuroethics is thus described as integrated, inclusive and impactful.

In their commentary, Kathinka Evers and co-authors emphasize that it is only the label “neuroethics” that has existed for 15 years. The kind of questions that neuroethics works with were already dealt with in the 20th century in applied ethics and bioethics, and some of the conceptual problems have been discussed in philosophy since antiquity. Furthermore, ethics committees have dealt with neuroethical issues long before the label existed. Viewed in this way, neuroethics is not a new and separate field, but rather a long-integrated and cooperating sub-discipline to neuroscience, philosophy and bioethics – depending on which surroundings we choose to emphasize.

Secondly, the commentators point out, the three characteristics of a “translational neuroethics” – integration, inclusiveness and impact – are a prerequisite for something to be considered a scientific field. An isolated field that does not include knowledge and perspectives from surrounding sciences and areas of interest, and that lacks practical impact, is hardly what we see today as a research field. The three characteristics are therefore not entirely successful as a vision of a future development of neuroethics. If the field is to deserve its name at all, the characteristics must already permeate neuroethics. Do they do that?

Yes, say the commentators if I understand them correctly. But in order to see this we must not be deceived by the distinctive designation, which gives the image of something new, separate and autonomous. We must see that work on neuroethical issues has been going on for a long time in several different philosophical and scientific contexts. Already when the field got its distinctive name, it was integrated, inclusive and impactful, not least within the academically established discipline of bioethics. Some problematic tendencies toward isolation have indeed existed, but they were related to the distinctive label, as it was sometimes used by isolated groups to present their activities as something new and special to be reckoned with.

The open commentary is summarized by the remark that we should avoid the temptation to see neuroethics as a completely new, autonomous and separate discipline: the temptation that the name contributes to. Such an image makes us myopic, the commentators write, which paradoxically can make it more difficult to support the three objectives of the vision. It is both truer and more fruitful to consider neuroethics and bioethics as distinct but not separate fields. If this is true, we do not need to launch an even newer version of neuroethics under an even newer label.

Read the open commentary here: Neuroethics & bioethics: distinct but not separate. If you want to read the article that is commented on, you will find the reference at the bottom of this post.

Pär Segerdahl

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Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

K. Evers, M. Guerrero & M. Farisco (2023) Neuroethics & Bioethics: Distinct but Not Separate, AJOB Neuroscience, 14:4, 414-416, DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2023.2257162

Anna Wexler & Laura Specker Sullivan (2023) Translational Neuroethics: A Vision for a More Integrated, Inclusive, and Impactful Field, AJOB Neuroscience, 14:4, 388-399, DOI: 10.1080/21507740.2021.2001078

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When ordinary words get scientific uses

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16 May, 2023 / / 1 Comment

A few weeks ago, Josepine Fernow wrote an urgent blog post about science and language. She linked to a research debate about conceptual challenges for neuroscience, challenges that arise when ordinary words get specialized uses in science as technically defined terms.

In the case under debate, the word “sentience” had been imported into the scientific study of the brain. A research group reported that they were able to determine that in vitro neurons from humans and mice have learning abilities and that they exhibit “sentience” in a simulated game world. Of course, it caused quite a stir that some neurons grown in a laboratory could exhibit sentience! But the research team did not mean what attracted attention. They meant something very technical that only a specialist in the field can understand. The surprising thing about the finding was therefore the choice of words.

When the startling choice of words was questioned by other researchers, the research team defended themselves by saying that they defined the term “sentience” strictly scientifically, so that everyone should have understood what they meant, at least the colleagues in the field. Well, not all people are specialists in the relevant field. Thus the discovery – whatever it was that was discovered – raised a stir among people as if it were a discovery of sentience in neurons grown in a laboratory.

The research group’s attitude towards their own technical language is similar to an attitude I encountered long ago in a famous theorist of language, Noam Chomsky. This is what Chomsky said about the scientific study of the nature of language: “every serious approach to the study of language departs from the common-sense usage, replacing it by some technical concept.” Chomsky is of course right that linguistics defines its own technical concepts of language. But one can sense a certain hubris in the statement, because it sounds as if only a linguistic theorist could understand “language” in a way that is worthy of serious attention. This is untenable, because it raises the question what a technical concept of language is. In what sense is a technical concept a concept of language? Is it a technical concept of language in the common sense? Or is it a technical concept of language in the same inaccessible sense? In the latter case, the serious study of language seems to degenerate into a navel-gazing that does not access language.

For a technical concept of language to be a concept of language, our ordinary notions must be taken into account. Otherwise, the technical concept ceases to be a concept of language.

This is perhaps something to consider in neuroscience as well. Namely to the extent that one wants to shed light on phenomena such as consciousness and sentience. Of course, neuroscience will define its own technical concepts of these phenomena, as in the debated case. But if the technical concepts are to function as concepts of consciousness and sentience, then one cannot neglect our ordinary uses of words.

Science is very serious and important. But if the special significance of science goes to our heads, then our attitude risks undermining the great importance of science for humanity. Here you can read the views of three neuroethicists on these important linguistic issues: Conceptual conundrums for neuroscience.

Pär Segerdahl

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Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

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Science, science communication and language

Brain and neuron, photo by Robina Weermeijer, Unsplash
21 March, 2023 / / 2 Comments

All communications require a shared language and fruitful discussions rely on conceptual clarity and common terms. Different definitions and divergent nomenclatures is a challenge for science: across different disciplines, between professions and when engaging with different publics. The audience for science communications is diverse. Research questions and results need to be shared within the field, between fields, with policy makers and publics. To be effective, the language, style and channel should to be adapted to the audiences’ needs, values and expectations.

This is not just in public facing communications. A recent discussion in Neuron is addressing the semantics of “sentience” in scientific communication, starting from an article by Brett J Kagan et al. on how in vitro neurons learn and exhibit sentience when embodied in a simulated game world. The article was published in December 2022 and received a lot of attention: both positive media coverage and a mix of positive and negative reactions from the scientific community. In a response, Fuat Balci et al. express concerns about the key claim in the article: claims that the authors demonstrated that cortical neurons are able to (in vitro) self-organise and display intelligent and sentient behaviour in a simulated game-world. Balci et al. are (among other things) critical of the use of terms and concepts that they claim misrepresent the findings. They also claim that Kagan et al. are overselling the translational and societal relevance of their findings. In essence creating hype around their own research. They raise a discussion about the importance of scientific communication: media tends to relay information from abstracts and statements about the significance of the research, and the scientists themselves amplify these statements in interviews. They claim that overselling results has an impact on how we evaluate scientific credibility and reliability. 

Why does this happen? Balci et al. point to a paper by Jevin D. West and Carl T. Bergstrom, from 2021 on misinformation in and about science, suggesting that hype, hyperbole (using exaggeration as a figure of speech or rhetorical device) and publication bias might have to do with demands on different productivity metrics. According to West and Bergstrom, exaggeration in popular scientific writing isn’t just misinforming the public: it also misleads researchers. In turn leading to citation misdirection and citation bias. A related problem is predatory publishing, which has the potential to mislead those of us without the means to detect untrustworthy publishers. And to top it off, echo-chambers and filter bubbles help select and deselect information and amplify the messages they think you want to hear.

The discussion in Neuron has continued with a response by Brett J. Kagan et al., in a letter about scientific communication and the semantics of sentience. They start by stating that the use of language to describe specific phenomena is a contentious aspect of scientific discourse and that whether scientific communication is effective or not depends on the context where the language is used. And that in this case using the term “sentience” has a technical meaning in line with recent literature in theoretical biology and the free energy principle, where biotic self-organisation is defined as either active inference or sentient behaviour. 

They make an interesting point that takes us back to the beginning of this post, namely the challenges of multidisciplinary work. Advancing research in cross-disciplinary collaboration is often challenging in the beginning because of difficulties integrating across fields. But if the different nomenclatures and approaches are recognized as an opportunity to improve and innovate, there can be benefits.

Recently, another letter by Karen S. Rommelfanger, Khara M. Ramos and Arleen Salles added a layer of reflection on the conceptual conundrums for neuroscience. In their own field of neuroethics, calls for clear language and concepts in scientific practice and communication is nothing new. They have all argued that conceptual clarity can improve science, enhance our understanding and lead to a more nuanced and productive discussion about the ethical issues. In the letter, the authors raise an important point about science and society. If we really believe that scientific terminology can retain its technically defined meaning when we transfer words to contexts permeated by a variety of cultural assumptions and colloquial uses of those same terms, we run the risk of trivialising the social and ethical impact that the choice of scientific terminology can have. They ask whether it is responsible of scientists to consider peers as their only (relevant) audience, or if conceptual clarity in science might often require public engagement and a multidisciplinary conversation.

One could also suggest that the choice to opt for terms like “sentience” and “intelligence” as a technical characterisation of how cortical neurons function in a simulated in-vitro game-world, could be considered to be questionable also from the point of view of scientific development. If we agree that neuroscience can shed light on sentience and intelligence, we also have to admit that at as of yet, we don’t know exactly how it will illuminate these capacities. And perhaps that means it is too early to bind very specific technical meaning to terms that have both colloquial and cultural meaning, and which neuroscience can illuminate in as yet unknown ways?

You may wonder why an ethics blog writer dares to express views on scientific terminology. The point I am trying to make is that we all use language, but we also produce language. Everyday. Together. In almost everything we do. This means that words like sentience and intelligence belong to us all. We have a shared responsibility for how we use them. The decision to give these common words technical meaning has consequences for how people will understand neuroscience when the words find their way back out of the technical context. But there can also be consequences for science when the words find their way in, as in the case under discussion. Because the boundaries between science and society might not be so clearly distinguishable as one might think.

Josepine Fernow

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Josepine Fernow, science communications project manager and coordinator at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics, develops communications strategy for European research projects

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A charming idea about consciousness

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8 November, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Some ideas can have such a charm that you only need to hear them once to immediately feel that they are probably true: “there must be some grain of truth in it.” Conspiracy theories and urban myths probably spread in part because of how they manage to charm susceptible human minds by ringing true. It is said that even some states of illness are spread because the idea of ​​the illness has such a strong impact on many of us. In some cases, we only need to hear about the diagnosis to start showing the symptoms and maybe we also receive the treatment. But even the idea of diseases spread by ideas has charm, so we should be on our guard.

The temptation to fall for the charm of certain ideas naturally also exists in academia. At the same time, philosophy and science are characterized by self-critical examination of ideas that may sound so attractive that we do not notice the lack of examination. As long as the ideas are limited hypotheses that can in principle be tested, it is relatively easy to correct one’s hasty belief in them. But sometimes these charming ideas consist of grand hypotheses about elusive phenomena that no one knows how to test. People can be so convinced by such ideas that they predict that future science just needs to fill in the details. A dangerous rhetoric to get caught up in, which also has its charm.

Last year I wrote a blog post about a theory at the border between science and philosophy that I would like to characterize as both grand and charming. This is not to say that the theory must be false, just that in our time it may sound immediately convincing. The theory is an attempt to explain an elusive “phenomenon” that perplexes science, namely the nature of consciousness. Many feel that if we could explain consciousness on purely scientific grounds, it would be an enormously significant achievement.

The theory claims that consciousness is a certain mathematically defined form of information processing. Associating consciousness with information is timely, we are immediately inclined to listen. What type of information processing would consciousness be? The theory states that consciousness is integrated information. Integration here refers not only to information being stored as in computers, but to all this diversified information being interconnected and forming an organized whole, where all parts are effectively available globally. If I understand the matter correctly, you can say that the integrated information of a system is the amount of generated information that exceeds the information generated by the parts. The more information a system manages to integrate, the more consciousness the system has.

What, then, is so charming about the idea that ​​consciousness is integrated information? Well, the idea might seem to fit with how we experience our conscious lives. At this moment you are experiencing multitudes of different sensory impressions, filled with details of various kinds. Visual impressions are mixed with impressions from the other senses. At the same time, however, these sensory impressions are integrated into a unified experience from a single viewpoint, your own. The mathematical theory of information processing where diversification is combined with integration of information may therefore sound attractive as a theory of consciousness. We may be inclined to think: Perhaps it is because the brain processes information in this integrative way that our conscious lives are characterized by a personal viewpoint and all impressions are organized as an ego-centred subjective whole. Consciousness is integrated information!

It becomes even more enticing when it turns out that the theory, called Integrated Information Theory (IIT), contains a calculable measure (Phi) of the amount of integrated information. If the theory is correct, then one would be able to quantify consciousness and give different systems different Phi for the amount of consciousness. Here the idea becomes charming in yet another way. Because if you want to explain consciousness scientifically, it sounds like a virtue if the theory enables the quantification of how much consciousness a system generates. The desire to explain consciousness scientifically can make us extra receptive to the idea, which is a bit deceptive.

In an article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Björn Merker, Kenneth Williford and David Rudrauf examine the theory of consciousness as integrated information. The review is detailed and comprehensive. It is followed up by comments from other researchers, and ends with the authors’ response. What the three authors try to show in the article is that even if the brain does integrate information in the sense of the theory, the identification of consciousness with integrated information is mistaken. What the theory describes is efficient network organization, rather than consciousness. Phi is a measure of network efficiency, not of consciousness. What the authors examine in particular is that charming feature I just mentioned: the theory can seem to “fit” with how we experience our conscious lives from a unified ego-centric viewpoint. It is true that integrated information constitutes a “unity” in the sense that many things are joined in a functionally organized way. But that “unity” is hardly the same “unity” that characterizes consciousness, where the unity is your own point of view on your experiences. Effective networks can hardly be said to have a “viewpoint” from a subjective “ego-centre” just because they integrate information. The identification of features of our conscious lives with the basic concepts of the theory is thus hasty, tempting though it may be.

The authors do not deny that the brain integrates information in accordance with the theory. The theory mathematically describes an efficient way to process information in networks with limited energy resources, something that characterizes the brain, the authors point out. But if consciousness is identified with integrated information, then many other systems that process information in the same efficient way would also be conscious. Not only other biological systems besides the brain, but also artifacts such as some large-scale electrical power grids and social networks. Proponents of the theory seem to accept this, but we have no independent reason to suppose that systems other than the brain would have consciousness. Why then insist that other systems are also conscious? Well, perhaps because one is already attracted by the association between the basic concepts of the theory and the organization of our conscious experiences, as well as by the possibility of quantifying consciousness in different systems. The latter may sound like a scientific virtue. But if the identification is false from the beginning, then the virtue appears rather as a departure from science. The theory might flood the universe with consciousness. At least that is how I understand the gist of ​​the article.

Anyone who feels the allure of the theory that consciousness is integrated information should read the careful examination of the idea: The integrated information theory of consciousness: A case of mistaken identity.

The last word has certainly not been said and even charming ideas can turn out to be true. The problem is that the charm easily becomes the evidence when we are under the influence of the idea. Therefore, I believe that the careful discussion of the theory of consciousness as integrated information is urgent. The article is an excellent example of the importance of self-critical examination in philosophy and science.

Pär Segerdahl

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Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

Merker, B., Williford, K., & Rudrauf, D. (2022). The integrated information theory of consciousness: A case of mistaken identity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 45, E41. doi:10.1017/S0140525X21000881

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Consciousness and complexity: theoretical challenges for a practically useful idea

13 July, 2021 / / 1 Comment

Contemporary research on consciousness is ambiguous, like the double-faced god Janus. On the one hand, it has achieved impressive practical results. We can today detect conscious activity in the brain for a number of purposes, including better therapeutic approaches to people affected by disorders of consciousness such as coma, vegetative state and minimally conscious state. On the other hand, the field is marked by a deep controversy about methodology and basic definitions. As a result, we still lack an overarching theory of consciousness, that is to say, a theoretical account that scholars agree upon.

Developing a common theoretical framework is recognized as increasingly crucial to understanding consciousness and assessing related issues, such as emerging ethical issues. The challenge is to find a common ground among the various experimental and theoretical approaches. A strong candidate that is achieving increasing consensus is the notion of complexity. The basic idea is that consciousness can be explained as a particular kind of neural information processing. The idea of associating consciousness with complexity was originally suggested by Giulio Tononi and Gerald Edelman in a 1998 paper titled Consciousness and Complexity. Since then, several papers have been exploring its potential as the key for a common understanding of consciousness.

Despite the increasing popularity of the notion, there are some theoretical challenges that need to be faced, particularly concerning the supposed explanatory role of complexity. These challenges are not only philosophically relevant. They might also affect the scientific reliability of complexity and the legitimacy of invoking this concept in the interpretation of emerging data and in the elaboration of scientific explanations. In addition, the theoretical challenges have a direct ethical impact, because an unreliable conceptual assumption may lead to misplaced ethical choices. For example, we might wrongly assume that a patient with low complexity is not conscious, or vice-versa, eventually making medical decisions that are inappropriate to the actual clinical condition.

The claimed explanatory power of complexity is challenged in two main ways: semantically and logically. Let us take a quick look at both.

Semantic challenges arise from the fact that complexity is such a general and open-ended concept. It lacks a shared definition among different people and different disciplines. This open-ended generality and lack of definition can be a barrier to a common scientific use of the term, which may impact its explanatory value in relation to consciousness. In the landmark paper by Tononi and Edelman, complexity is defined as the sum of integration (conscious experience is unified) and differentiation (we can experience a large number of different states). It is important to recognise that this technical definition of complexity refers only to the stateof consciousness, not to its contents. This means that complexity-related measures can give us relevant information about the levelof consciousness, yet they remain silent about the corresponding contentsandtheirphenomenology. This is an ethically salient point, since the dimensions of consciousness that appear most relevant to making ethical decisions are those related to subjective positive and negative experiences. For instance, while it is generally considered as ethically neutral how we treat a machine, it is considered ethically wrong to cause negative experiences to other humans or to animals.

Logical challenges arise about the justification for referring to complexity in explaining consciousness. This justification usually takes one of two alternative forms. The justification is either bottom-up (from data to theory) or top-down (from phenomenology to physical structure). Both raise specific issues.

Bottom-up: Starting from empirical data indicating that particular brain structures or functions correlate to particular conscious states, relevant theoretical conclusions are inferred. More specifically, since the brains of subjects that are manifestly conscious exhibit complex patterns (integrated and differentiated patterns), we are supposed to be justified to infer that complexity indexes consciousness. This conclusion is a sound inference to the best explanation, but the fact that a conscious state correlates with a complex brain pattern in healthy subjects does not justify its generalisation to all possible conditions (for example, disorders of consciousness), and it does not logically imply that complexity is a necessary and/or sufficient condition for consciousness.

Top-down: Starting from certain characteristics of personal experience, we are supposed to be justified to infer corresponding characteristics of the underlying physical brain structure. More specifically, if some conscious experience is complex in the technical sense of being both integrated and differentiated, we are supposed to be justified to infer that the correlated brain structures must be complex in the same technical sense. This conclusion does not seem logically justified unless we start from the assumption that consciousness and corresponding physical brain structures must be similarly structured. Otherwise it is logically possible that conscious experience is complex while the corresponding brain structure is not, and vice versa. In other words, it does not appear justified to infer that since our conscious experience is integrated and differentiated, the corresponding brain structure must be integrated and differentiated. This is a possibility, but not a necessity.

The abovementioned theoretical challenges do not deny the practical utility of complexity as a relevant measure in specific clinical contexts, for example, to quantify residual consciousness in patients with disorders of consciousness. What is at stake is the explanatory status of the notion. Even if we question complexity as a key factor in explaining consciousness, we can still acknowledge that complexity is practically relevant and useful, for example, in the clinic. In other words, while complexity as an explanatory category raises serious conceptual challenges that remain to be faced, complexity represents at the practical level one of the most promising tools that we have to date for improving the detection of consciousness and for implementing effective therapeutic strategies.

I assume that Giulio Tononi and Gerald Edelman were hoping that their theory about the connection between consciousness and complexity finally would erase the embarrassing ambiguity of consciousness research, but the deep theoretical challenges suggest that we have to live with the resemblance to the double-faced god Janus for a while longer.

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Michele Farisco, Postdoc Researcher at Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics, working in the EU Flagship Human Brain Project.

Tononi, G. and G. M. Edelman. 1998. Consciousness and complexity. Science 282(5395): 1846-1851.

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To change the changing human

Neuron
1 June, 2021 / / 1 Comment

Neuroscience contributes to human self-understanding, but it also raises concerns that it might change humanness, for example, through new neurotechnology that affects the brain so deeply that humans no longer are truly human, or no longer experience themselves as human. Patients who are treated with deep brain stimulation, for example, can state that they feel like robots.

What ethical and legal measures could such a development justify?

Arleen Salles, neuroethicist in the Human Brain Project, argues that the question is premature, since we have not clarified our concept of humanness. The matter is complicated by the fact that there are several concepts of human nature to be concerned about. If we believe that our humanness consists of certain unique abilities that distinguish humans from animals (such as morality), then we tend to dehumanize beings who we believe lack these abilities as “animal like.” If we believe that our humanity consists in certain abilities that distinguish humans from inanimate objects (such as emotions), then we tend to dehumanize beings who we believe lack these abilities as “mechanical.” It is probably in the latter sense that the patients above state that they do not feel human but rather as robots.

After a review of basic features of central philosophical concepts of human nature, Arleen Salles’ reflections take a surprising turn. She presents a concept of humanness that is based on the neuroscientific research that one worries could change our humanness! What is truly surprising is that this concept of humanness to some extent questions the question itself. The concept emphasizes the profound changeability of the human.

What does it mean to worry that neuroscience can change human nature, if human nature is largely characterized its ability to change?

If you follow the Ethics Blog and remember a post about Kathinka Evers’ idea of a neuroscientifically motivated responsibility for human nature, you are already familiar with the dynamic concept of human nature that Arleen Salles presents. In simple terms, it can be said to be a matter of complementing human genetic evolution with an “epigenetic” selective stabilization of synapses, which every human being undergoes during upbringing. These connections between brain cells are not inherited genetically but are selected in the living brain while it interacts with its environments. Language can be assumed to belong to the human abilities that largely develop epigenetically. I have proposed a similar understanding of language in collaboration with two ape language researchers.

Do not assume that this dynamic concept of human nature presupposes that humanness is unstable. As if the slightest gust of wind could disrupt human evolution and change human nature. On the contrary, the language we develop during upbringing probably contributes to stabilizing the many human traits that develop simultaneously. Language probably supports the transmission to new generations of the human forms of life where language has its uses.

Arleen Salles’ reflections are important contributions to the neuroethical discussion about human nature, the brain and neuroscience. In order to take ethical responsibility, we need to clarify our concepts, she emphasizes. We need to consider that humanness develops in three interconnected dimensions. It is about our genetics together with the selective stabilization of synapses in living brains in continuous interaction with social-cultural-linguistic environments. All at the same time!

Arleen Salles’ reflections are published as a chapter in a new anthology, Developments in Neuroethics and Bioethics (Elsevier). I am not sure if the publication will be open access, but hopefully you can find Arleen Salles’ contribution via this link: Humanness: some neuroethical reflections.

The chapter is recommended as an innovative contribution to the understanding of human nature and the question of whether neuroscience can change humanness. The question takes a surprising turn, which suggests we all together have an ongoing responsibility for our changing humanness.

Pär Segerdahl

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

Arleen Salles (2021). Humanness: some neuroethical reflections. Developments in Neuroethics and Bioethics. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.dnb.2021.03.002

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We think about bioethics

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An unusually big question

Neuron
20 April, 2021 / / 2 Comments

Sometimes the intellectual claims on science are so big that they risk obscuring the actual research. This seems to happen not least when the claims are associated with some great prestigious question, such as the origin of life or the nature of consciousness. By emphasizing the big question, one often wants to show that modern science is better suited than older human traditions to answer the riddles of life. Better than philosophy, for example.

I think of this when I read a short article about such a riddle: “What is consciousness? Scientists are beginning to unravel a mystery that has long vexed philosophers.” The article by Christof Koch gives the impression that it is only a matter of time before science determines not only where in the brain consciousness arises (one already seems have a suspect), but also the specific neural mechanisms that give rise to – everything you have ever experienced. At least if one is to believe one of the fundamental theories about the matter.

Reading about the discoveries behind the identification of where in the brain consciousness arises is as exciting as reading a whodunit. It is obvious that important research is being done here on the effects that loss or stimulation of different parts of the brain can have on people’s experiences, mental abilities and personalities. The description of a new technology and mathematical algorithm for determining whether patients are conscious or not is also exciting and indicates that research is making fascinating progress, which can have important uses in healthcare. But when mathematical symbolism is used to suggest a possible fundamental explanation for everything you have ever experienced, the article becomes as difficult to understand as the most obscure philosophical text from times gone by.

Since even representatives of science sometimes make philosophical claims, namely, when they want to answer prestigious riddles, it is perhaps wiser to be open to philosophy than to compete with it. Philosophy is not just about speculating about big questions. Philosophy is also about humbly clarifying the questions, which otherwise tend to grow beyond all reasonable limits. Such openness to philosophy flourishes in the Human Brain Project, where some of my philosophical colleagues at CRB collaborate with neuroscientists to conceptually clarify questions about consciousness and the brain.

Something I myself wondered about when reading the scientifically exciting but at the same time philosophically ambitious article, is the idea that consciousness is everything we experience: “It is the tune stuck in your head, the sweetness of chocolate mousse, the throbbing pain of a toothache, the fierce love for your child and the bitter knowledge that eventually all feelings will end.” What does it mean to take such an all-encompassing claim seriously? What is not consciousness? If everything we can experience is consciousness, from the taste of chocolate mousse to the sight of the stars in the sky and our human bodies with their various organs, where is the objective reality to which science wants to relate consciousness? Is it in consciousness?

If consciousness is our inevitable vantage point, if everything we experience as real is consciousness, it becomes unclear how we can treat consciousness as an objective phenomenon in the world along with the body and other objects. Of course, I am not talking here about actual scientific research about the brain and consciousness, but about the limitless intellectual claim that scientists sooner or later will discover the neural mechanisms that give rise to everything we can ever experience.

Pär Segerdahl

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

Christof Koch, What Is Consciousness? Scientists are beginning to unravel a mystery that has long vexed philosophers, Nature 557, S8-S12 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05097-x

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We transcend disciplinary borders

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How do we take responsibility for dual-use research?

Newton's Cradle
9 February, 2021 / / 1 Comment

We are more often than we think governed by old patterns of thought. As a philosopher, I find it fascinating to see how mental patterns capture us, how we get imprisoned in them, and how we can get out of them. With that in mind, I recently read a book chapter on something that is usually called dual-use research. Here, too, there are patterns of thought that can capture us.

In the chapter, Inga Ulnicane discusses how one developed responsibility for neuroscientific dual-use research of concern in the Human Brain Project (HBP). I read the chapter as a philosophical drama. The European rules that govern HBP are themselves governed by mental patterns about what dual-use research is. In order to take real responsibility for the project, it was therefore necessary within HBP to think oneself free from the patterns that governed the governance of the project. Responsibility became a philosophical challenge: to raise awareness of the real dual-use issues that may be associated with neuroscientific research.

Traditionally, “dual use” refers to civilian versus military uses. By regulating that research in HBP should focus exclusively on civil applications, it can be said that the regulation of the project was itself regulated by this pattern of thought. There are, of course, major military interests in neuroscientific research, not least because the research borders on information technology, robotics and artificial intelligence. Results can be used to improve soldiers’ abilities in combat. They can be used for more effective intelligence gathering, more powerful image analysis, faster threat detection, more accurate robotic weapons, and to satisfy many other military desires.

The problem is that there are more problematic desires than military ones. Research results can also be used to manipulate people’s thoughts and feelings for non-military purposes. They can be used to monitor populations and control their behaviour. It is impossible to say once and for all what problematic desires neuroscientific research can arouse, military and non-military. A single good idea can cause several bad ideas in many other areas.

Therefore, one prefers in HBP to talk about beneficial and harmful uses, rather than civilian and military. This more open understanding of “the dual” means that one cannot identify problematic areas of use once and for all. Instead, continuous discussion is required among researchers and other actors as well as the general public to increase awareness of various possible problematic uses of neuroscientific research. We need to help each other see real problems, which can occur in completely different places than we expect. Since the problems moreover move across borders, global cooperation is needed between brain projects around the world.

Within HBP, it was found that an additional thought pattern governed the regulation of the project and made it more difficult to take real responsibility. The definition of dual-use in the documents was taken from the EU export control regulation, which is not entirely relevant for research. Here, too, greater awareness is required, so that we do not get caught up in thought patterns about what it is that could possibly have dual uses.

My personal conclusion is that human challenges are not only caused by a lack of knowledge. They are also caused by how we are tempted to think, by how we unconsciously repeat seemingly obvious patterns of thought. Our tendency to become imprisoned in mental patterns makes us unaware of our real problems and opportunities. Therefore, we should take the human philosophical drama more seriously. We need to see the importance of philosophising ourselves free from our self-incurred captivity in enticing ways of thinking. This is what one did in the Human Brain Project, I suggest, when one felt challenged by the question of what it really means to take responsibility for dual-use research of concern.

Read Inga Ulnicane’s enlightening chapter, The governance of dual-use research in the EU. The case of neuroscience, which also mentions other patterns that can govern our thinking about governance of dual-use research.

Pär Segerdahl

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

Ulnicane, I. (2020). The governance of dual-use research in the EU: The case of neuroscience. In A. Calcara, R. Csernatoni, & C. Lavallée (Editors), Emerging security technologies and EU governance: Actors, practices and processes. London: Routledge / Taylor & Francis Group, pages 177-191.

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Thinking about thinking

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