Consciousness Without Sensation
Mental Life in a Void
In the paper, published in Duke University Press in 1974, “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?” by Thomas Nagel, we get what is perhaps the most elegant definition of consciousness to date. That is, the subjective experience of being in the world. Presumably, it is “like” something to be my wife, and it is (probably) not “like” anything to be a pocket calculator. That “being like something” is what we mean by consciousness.
As Sam Harris routinely puts it (first, I think, in his book Waking Up) this way, and I’m paraphrasing: “Even if we’re radically confused about everything—brains in vats living in a simulation—it is still ‘like’ something to have experience. Consciousness is the one thing that cannot be an illusion.”
Nagel’s explanation may be elegant and self-evidently true, but it doesn’t help us pin down the hard problem of consciousness—essentially, where does consciousness (qualia, experience) come from?
In Cordwainer Smith’s short story “Scanners Live in Vain,” conscious humans are incapable of deep space travel lest they suffer the “Great Pain of Space” and eventually die. To solve this problem, travelers are kept in hibernation on ships manned by people known as Habermans—ex-criminals who have undergone a procedure where all senses are removed save for vision. Having only a limited consciousness, habermans are able to survive and successfully navigate ships through space.
Habermans are supervised Scanners, people who have voluntarily undergone the procedure but are outfitted with advanced equipment that enables detailed, objective assessments of people and the environment. Scanners are able to, occasionally for leisure, become “cranched” wherein they temporarily regain all of their senses and live, mostly, as normal.
In his story, Smith doesn’t actually attempt to answer the question of what consciousness is or where it comes from. If we follow Nagel, it is probably “like” something to be a Haberman
It’s not just fiction that limits a discussion of consciousness to sense data. For the most part, scientific research focuses on third-person, verifiable data: namely, sensation. Papers like “The Emergence of Human Consciousness: From Fetal to Neonatal Life,” by Hugo Lagercrantz & Jean-Pierre Changeux in Pediatric Research or Christof Koch’s “When Does Consciousness Arise in Human Babies?” focus on fetal reactions to stimuli and fetal dream states.
Unfortunately, a reaction to sensory input or observation of REM in a fetus does not answer the hard problem. Sense data and reactions to it aren’t the same as qualia or experience, but it might be the best we can do. That being said, it’s unlikely that some sort of switch goes off at the moment of birth and suddenly a baby is a conscious creature. We may not know when subjective experience emerges, but we do know that it does. Even dreaming people are having an experience, after all, and that’s consciousness (even if a bit strange and disorganized).
So, let’s combine Smith’s story with the state of fetal consciousness research (and, if you couldn’t guess, I don’t have an answer to what follows). Say we have an 8-month-old fetus. This is no ordinary fetus, however. This child has no sight, hearing, taste, smell, or touch. It doesn’t even have proprioception, a vestibular system, or even interoception.
In this thought experiment, the fetus has otherwise normal neuronal and anatomical development. The question: is it “like” anything to be this fetus? What if it is born, fed, and grows? Keep in mind that this human (I’m avoiding the word “person” because of a range of complicating implications) has not created memories with which to relive past experiences—this isn’t a Haberman.
My vote is, despite it being a black box, yes.
