The Uniqueness of Objective Functions to the Human Condition
Over time, people have found thousands of different ways to define how human consciousness is differentiated from the way animals interact with the world. We instinctively want to define what makes our conscious experience of the world unique. We would like to take this opportunity to throw our proverbial hat into the ring. The one thing a human can do that an animal cannot is choose its own objective function.
Let us consider a dog named Sparky. Sparky probably has a mental landscape in which he exists and in which he feels pain, pleasure, pride, or boredom. Sparky certainly creates hypotheses about how the world works while learning from those around him. Sparky can even make choices about how best to achieve what he wants. The one thing Sparky can’t do is choose his objective function. Like most animals, Sparky has had his objective function bred into him: he wants to eat, procreate, carry out his training (emotional conditioning), and—thanks to centuries of selective breeding—please and be of service to his human family. (We are by no means trying to trivialize this emotion in dogs. This emotional drive is likely more powerfully felt than the emotion humans call love, because stronger selective pressures have created it.)
Sparky has the capacity to think: “How do I maximize positive emotions?” but he cannot question whether he should want to maximize his positive emotions.
The ability to ask: “Should I try to optimize the objective function that is a combination of inbred traits and conditioning I have experienced, or should I attempt to optimize for something else?” and then ask: “Why should I try to optimize for that other thing?” is a uniquely human capability.
A human who chooses not to exercise their ability to choose what she wants from life is denying the single aspect of their consciousness that differentiates them from an animal.