Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal: Sex, robots, and what is "consciousness"?

Monday, March 21, 2011

Sex, robots, and what is "consciousness"?

Seven on consciousness, Chien Chi Liu on robotics (Wisdom Quarterly)

(T2) Gynoids and actroids, female robots, are advancing rapidly to serve humans.

Douglas Adams, author of the visionary comedy classic series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, defined robots in a futuristic marketing campaign as "Your plastic pal who's fun to be with." This may apply equally to marital devices already in use by women or the proxy products being developed by single Japanese nerds cooped up in laboratories in Yokohama.

Their amazing advances showcased in five years ago boggle the mind because this is what is being shown to the public not what is state-of-the-art. Covert black budget projects already involve androids. Robotics already dominate automobile manufacturing. Gynoids are not too far behind, with the misuse of psychological findings on the subtleties of what provokes human sexual response.

People are such that relations with inanimate objects already take place. And some with paraphilias even prefer the practice which keeps one safe from threatening intimacy issues. We are vulnerable to attachment but may feel safer expressing shamed impulses with automatons as the prophetic film "Westworld" once envisioned.

What is Consciousness?

An interesting question is, Can robots ever have consciousness? I think it is safe to say that they already possess a rudimentary form of awareness that qualifies as "consciousness." Are they able to tap into the metaconsciousness that connects all living organisms? Probably not, but the melding of organic life and artificial technology certainly seems to overcome that obstacle to full integration and conscious operating.

Buddhist phenomenology and psychology in the Abhidharma defines "self," or the ego-soul-individual, as a coherent and interdependent set of aggregates, "heaps," or grouped components. There are many such components. But for simplicity they are usually defined as five groups: (1) form, (2) sensation, (3) perception, (4) other mental formations, volition being the most salient, and (5) consciousness.

While they may sound like useless rubrics that have no meaning, they in fact represent a very profound understanding and intimacy with the inner workings of ourselves. To know oneself is to know these aggregates (skandhas). And when we speak of a "self" or what belongs to a self, invariably we are referring to one or more of these sets. As theoretical as it may seem, this is true in a conventional sense. It is possible to directly observe it, even if few attain this vision. The ultimate truth called anatta is to see that form and mind are empty, and the very emptiness is form and mind.

"Form" usually means body. But it is not limited to visible or tangible bodies. It is called "form" because it includes subtle bodies not seen by the denser eye faculty but visible to the refined mental faculty. The form group actually includes four things, qualities of materiality spoken of for the sake of simplicity as the Four Great Elements (solidity, extension, energy, cohesion) and derived elements. These subatomic elements can be seen directly in deep meditation and understood at the profoundest level without recourse to high tech equipment.

The mind itself is far subtler and better suited to the examination. Seeing things as they truly are, the information is undeniable and potentially liberating. At a subatomic level what one sees are called kalapas, which Wisdom Quarterly has frequently discusses. They are the ultimate constituents of matter. The ultimate constituents of mind are called cittas.

Mind is even more interesting than form. As a technical Abhidharma term, "mind" refers to the four remaining heaps (sensation, perception, volition, consciousness). Each is defined in exacting terms that should not be confused with the meaning or connotations that limit the English words used to translate and roughly approximate technical Pali and Sanskrit terms. The Buddha taught these things in great detail which has continued in the oral tradition for the sake of seeing things as they truly are, becoming detached, and thereby attaining liberation. They are not philosophical speculations as many treat them.

For instance, there are 50 formations (sankharas). But for simplicity this heap of factors is simply called "volition" (merely a representative member of the group). Moreover, sensation and perception (two of the three preceding heaps) are also mental formations. But they are so important as to merit special treatment when revealed by a supremely enlightened buddha. (An ordinary enlightened individual would not be able to discern them without instruction). This is one of the special characteristics that distinguishes an enlightened being from a samma-sam-buddha, or "supremely enlightened discoverer and teacher of liberating truth."

So fine are the distinctions that to make them known, the Buddha spent seven weeks meditating and reviewing the psychological and material data -- name and form (nama-rupa) -- rediscovered under the Bodhi tree to systematically organize it for teaching. He had to find a comprehensible way of conveying what he found.

Anyone is capable of becoming a buddha. But to do so is such a herculean endeavor as to be almost impossible. It is enough to make the best use of the Buddha's Teachings. That is to say, if we all wished for it, vowed to complete it, and strove diligently from this day forward, it would be aeons before even one of us were able to accomplish that kind of supreme teachable enlightenment. We would have to wait until this dispensation ended, then rediscover the ultimate truth, and revealing it by establishing a new dispensation of the Dharma in the world, which would have long since forgotten the Teachings of the historical Buddha.

"Consciousness" (viññana or vijnana) in a very technical sense is defined pragmatically as being of six kinds. Consciousness is awareness through the six sense. "Mind" is not a thing but rather a dynamic process. If form or materiality is only the interplay of the Four Great Elements (the major qualities and their derivatives) then mind or mentality is only the interplay of these four formless constituents of being. Together they comprise the Five Aggregates of Clinging.

This is a fancy way of saying that mental processes are interdependent: They interact with one another, arising based on a material (kama) and, more importantly, a fine-material (rupa) base.

With impingement on a physical and/or a fine-material base (which means impingement is not limited to the gross flesh we touch and are well aware of but rather to more subtle conceptions of form), there arises sensation (pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral). The brain, which is not the contents of the skull, is also a sense organ: It receives mental impressions not available to five ordinary senses.

Interestingly the development of "higher" faculties, what we commonly refer to as "psychic" abilities, depends in part on the physical base. The physical eye-base is responsible, when activated and developed, for clairvoyance, the ear clairaudience, and so on.

Of course, subtle sights and subtle sounds are not perceived through the eyes and ears. But they share a base of derived-materiality such that their subtle forms are discerned by the mind, a faculty capable of perception with a physical basis not in the cranium. But it is a matter of degree, for they are received in the same way, as impulses that eventually get processed in the brain like ordinary sights and sounds.

The base of consciousness is not in the head. The "mind door" is very specifically located in another part of the body, which cultures throughout the world have long known, but which we are led away from by modern neuroscience that increasingly focuses us to search above the neck.

But rather than thinking about, speculating on, or merely contemplating these things and whether they are true or not, it is far more useful to develop (bhavana) direct-knowledge (jnana). The Dharma is here for realization not for wholesome discussion, and especially not for unwholesome discussion. The Truth will not do a person good who does not put that Truth into practice as truth. To talk about it without practicing for realization is like reading a menu without ever eating.

This depth of Buddhist teaching is alive and well in Burma, which more than any other country, more so since it was blocked off from the world by a police state dictatorship, preserved, practiced, and developed the Abhidharma.

See in particular the freely available teachings of the modern enlightened Buddhist master Pa Auk Sayadaw, paauk.org. We cannot say nearly as much for the dominant Burmese dry-insight tradition advocated by Mahasi Sayadaw, which ignores the Buddha's emphasis on "right concentration," (samma-samadhi) defined by the Buddha as the development of the first four absorptions (dhyana) as the basis for successful insight (vipassana).

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