“Consciousness is that annoying thing that happens between naps.” This is how world-renowned philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers defines the quintessentially human state in this debate, although his facetiousness is quite easy to detect: Chalmers famously formulated the “hard problem of consciousness” and built an immensely successful career around it. His views on consciousness are hardly that simple.
IAI Video: The Dance of Life (click to play)
In fact, Chalmers has elsewhere referred to consciousness as presenting a kind of paradox: “There’s nothing we know about more directly… but at the same time it’s the most mysterious phenomenon in the universe.”
Consciousness is indeed our most immediate and intimate experience. Perhaps no other human trait is at once so imminently close to us yet so remote and elusive when we try to grasp it conceptually. Although we spend most of our lives in a state of consciousness, as soon as we subject it to more careful scrutiny we realize that we know very little about it—how does it actually happen? And how does conscious experience fit into our scientific picture of the world?
In an attempt to answer some of these questions, The Institute of Art and Ideas has brought together cognitive scientist David Chalmers along with Peter Hacker (philosopher and critic of cognitive neuroscience) and Susanna Martinez-Conde (neuroscientist).
Although the questions formally asked in the debate are “Is experience all we have?” and “What is experience?,” these could have easily been phrased as “What is consciousness?” As Chalmers writes in his essay "Consciousness and its place in nature" (which you can read online here), “the hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience” (2002, 247, my italics). Chalmers’s essay provides a great overview of the problem of consciousness and the mind-body corollary, and if the IAI debate sparks your curiosity on the topic, this a great resource to go to next. (There is also a PEL podcast episode called “What is the mind?” that refers to the Chalmers article quite often.) According to Chalmers, all human beings have subjective experience, i.e., “there is something it is like to be them.”. Apart from being signposted by "naps," that’s how we decide if a mental state is conscious—when there is something it is like to be in that state.
As we can see from the debate at the IAI however, for someone like Peter Hacker (a Wittgenstein scholar and an analytical philosopher) this question is at worst inane and ludicrous, and at best misleading. ‘What’s it like to have an experience?’ is a question that only seemingly makes sense grammatically, but upon analysis turns out that it doesn’t. Experience isn’t “like” anything. It’s not the same as seeing an opera, where you can ask “What was it like?” and answer by saying “Wonderful!” Asking "What is experience?" misleadingly assumes that experience is "a thing." Using a substantive induces the idea of substances, and makes us look for "things" where there aren’t any. Because of a misuse of language we start looking for chimeras, and when we can’t find anything, we hopelessly declare it a mystery.
But as Chalmers argues, our experience is a real thing and it is formed of everything from perceptions to emotions and thoughts. To describe what it is like to have these experiences, philosophers have come up with the term qualia. These are phenomenal properties that characterize our experience. Given the developments in neuroscience and the advances of the technology enabling us to study the brain, it seems that physical processes in the brain are indeed responsible for experience. So the hard question of consciousness is not only how do physical processes generate experience, but why is there a corresponding state of experience to these physical properties? Why is there a feeling that comes with the awareness of the sensory input?
In Consciousness and Its Place in Nature Chalmers divides the solutions to the hard problem of consciousness into reductive/materialist and non-reductive/non-materialist.
The neuroscientist’s perspective, as expressed in this debate, might fall under the former category. For Martinez, experience is generated in the brain, and the brain is part of the physical universe. Since the brain is governed by the same natural laws that govern the universe, then at some point in the near future we will be able to fully explain experience with neuroscience. Everything from how we perceive colors to the so-called "gut feeling" is fully explainable through neuroscience. Chalmers would call this view "type-A materialism," the kind of materialism where “there is no epistemic gap between physical and phenomenal truths” (id., p. 251).
Although Martinez does admit there are, at least for now, some limitations to what neuroscience can explain, and also admits scientists are primarily concerned with the "how," while the "why" is reserved for philosophers, most materialists think all this “mind talk” is complete nonsense. Science will be able to explain how physical processes give rise to experiences, and such an account will be based exclusively on natural principles. Phenomenal states are not ontologically different from physical states according to this view, and everything can be reduced to physical processes. Names like Gilbert Ryle, Stephen Stich, Paul and Patricia Churchland, as well as the popular Dan Dennett would fall in this category.
On the other hand, non-reductionist/non-materialists argue that subjective experience cannot be reduced to objective knowledge. The PEL episode “What is the mind?” is an attempt to make sense of both sides of the argument, in a fair and intellectually honest effort to grasp classic texts in the theory of mind (although it is particularly delightful to hear Wes lay into Ryle and Dennett, whom he—to put it elegantly—passionately disagrees with). As mentioned in the episode, arguments such as Frank Jackson’s Knowledge Argument and Thomas Nagel’s “What Is It Like to Be a Bat” are attempts to show that subjective experience cannot be reduced to objective knowledge. For instance, in the Knowledge Argument, we suppose there is a neuroscientist out there, named Mary, who is an expert on color perception, but has been brought up and lived exclusively in a black-and-white room. When she does go out and experiences the color red for the first time, she will have a fundamentally different experience from having studied and knowing everything about the color, which proves that science cannot account for all subjective experience. Perhaps it would have been interesting to hear Martinez’s neuroscientific take on this argument.
In Consciousness and Its Place in Nature, Chalmers also mentions the Knowledge Argument (along with many others) but he also proposes at least three alternatives to materialism that are compatible with a broadly naturalistic view of the world. Interactionism (i.e., the view that physical states cause phenomenal states and vice versa), epiphenomenalism (where physical states cause phenomenal ones, but not the other way around, and phenomenal states are ontologically different from physical ones), and finally, a type of monism where phenomenal properties are located at the fundamental level of physical reality and underlie physical reality itself.
As he mentions in the debate, Chalmers thinks neuroscience is primarily preoccupied with correlations, namely correlating experience with a so-called "neural correlative consciousness." While tracking down such correlations has tremendous value, it still doesn’t explain the connection between the objective reality and the subjective experience. For that, we need some kind of principle that bridges the gap, and only once we have that principle will we be able to explain the wonderful mystery of experience.
Ana Sandoiu is a writer and researcher living in Brighton, UK. You can follow her on Twitter @annasandoiu.
“Given the developments in neuroscience and the advances of the technology enabling us to study the brain, it seems that physical processes in the brain are indeed responsible for experience.”
Really? What is the source of this claim?
Read anything by Dan Dennett or Pat Churchland, for starters.
interoception is common knowledge: https://www.amazon.com/How-You-Feel-Interoceptive-Neurobiological-ebook/dp/B00M5JXUCY
idk about common knowledge wayne..
have you ever gauged the common persons knowledge?
common, implied, among those qualified to know–neuroscientists
What if our experience is a unity? Breaking this unity to analyse it then leads to the problem of how do we put Humpty back together again.
Our immediate here-and-now experience is a unity of various elements that can be distinguished (my list: physical, emotional, cerebral, spiritual (ends and values), and social (individuals learn from others)).
Yes.
First of all I think is important to note the difference between elements of something and manifestations of something. Listing the elements of something will, in the end, be a description of that which you are describing. I think the correct term for the items in your list would be manifestations of experience, and that is where the problem resides when we try to answer what experience is. We cannot put the pieces back together because those are not pieces, they are mere manifestations that do not coincide exactly with the phenomena we are trying to describe. For example, take the way an elephant and its various manifestations, from leaving big footprints to the space it uses, it’s ability to spray water out of its trunk and the sounds it can make. If you don’t know what an elephant is and try to understand what an elephant is, you are going to have a hard time. However, if I we go for a description of its elements like saying it has a trunk, grey and thick skin, very heavy, etc., you’ll have an easier path walk when putting those parts together and creating in your mind an idea of what an elephant is.
I see how “our immediate here-and-now’ experience includes physical (I’d prefer the term “sensory’), emotional, and ‘cerebral’ components. But it seems to me that the categories of the spiritual and the social involve higher-order interpretations that we place upon sensory, cognitive, and affective experience, and thus don’t count as contents of the immediate here-and-now in the same way. For example, we see another person (sensory experience), hear them talk (sensory) and, if they’re speaking a language we know, we understand what they’re saying (cognitive). We may have a strong emotional reaction to what they’re saying. Our higher-order cognitions about how to negotiate that situation and how to incorporate that knowledge into our overall cognitve picture of the world is what we refer to as ‘the social.’
Second, Evan, I don’t quite see how any of the participants in the IAI debate, or the other people that Ana refers to, commit the error of trying to split apart experience in an objectionable manner.
Nice summary Ana–didn’t know Chalmers outlined these positions between neuroscience (How/why) and philosophy (Why/how). My experience is that there is considerable hostility between these fields, as if the language and hermenutics of one field violates the other. Surely the domains and aims of hermenutics of each differ, but do not necessarily invalidate each other.
The dual aspects of reality are captured by words referred to in OP: mind/world, subjective/objective, phenomenal/physical. Those who hold that there is a distinction between mind and body are referred to as Cartesian dualists, which has been under fire since Descartes. Those who resolve the dichotomy in favor of the physical are Empiricists (i.e., Hume) on the science side–identified here as reductive materialists with no epistemic gap between physical and phenomenal–and those who choose to favor the mind are Transcendentalists (i.e., Berkley, Spinoza) on the philosophical side.
Where it gets interesting is that neuroscience examines the correlates of consciousness (experience, the phenomenal) which philosophy has always theorized about, and thus the confrontation. What appears in science by identifying neurological correlates of consciousness, is possible causation and thus the position of 1) Interactionism–the physical reciprocally causes the phenomenal), 2) Epiphenomenalism–the physical unilateraly causes the phenomenal (and are ontologically different) but not vice versa, and 3) Monism: the phenomenal and physical co-occur with cause being effect, and effect being cause.
I think it is the job of either a good philosophy of science scientist or a good philosophy of science philosopher to ferret out which is which.
Well, I am not going to presume to solve the “problem”. I suspect that Cartesian dualism has been “under fire” because it goes against the grain of those who insist on unification of principle. Now, it is true that, in physics at least, unification has had some great successes. But, for one example, as I survey the landscape, I see no convincing theory that will unite gravity and the electromagnetic force. Perhaps there is one, but assuming that there must be one is a matter of faith.
So, why not dualism? Denying the existence of consciousness is stupid. Denying the existence of independently existing matter also seems stupid to me. Why not admit the existence of both and then investigate and marvel at their intricate dance?
Good news, if you don’t deny the existence of consciousness, and you don’t deny the existence of independent matter, then you are a monist, not a separatist/dualist. Not sure who makes up these rules, except that they are out there, and your position is entirely reasonable.
If the “rules” say that my views make me a monist, I suspect the reason is that some would want to put me in the materialist-epiphinomenal basket. This view, as I understand it, is that consciousness is somehow an inexplicable side effect of monistic materialism, and otherwise has no causal efficacy and no real reason to even exist.
I refuse to be placed in this basket. A dance takes two, and an the intricate dance between mind and matter requires fundamental and distinctive contributions from each one.
As you see above, epiphenomenalism was different from the monist category.
Yes, there are many monisms out there, and as you say, might be a naive physicalism, which would not give adequate articulation of consciousness.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/monism/#Het
If we define substance as based on affects–ability to affect things, then we can include both matter and consciousness in a combined articulation. The reason this is important is because those who go Cartesian artificially divide mind and body rather than integrate causing a false and harmful concept of the human and physical condition.
I am actually trying to reply to your most recent post, but there is no “reply” command below it. Has my technological ignorance struck again, or is there a reason that replies are limited (not a question for you, but for our technological overlords)?
Anyway, your interesting reply has left me with a few questions. What do you mean by “combined articulation”? Continuing my argument from analogy in the subject I know best, (physics), electricity and magnetism were originally thought to be separate “substances” (ability to affect things). But Maxwell discovered that there was a single substance (charge) whose positions and motions accounted for both electric and magnetic effects. His laws of electromagnetism “unified” these effects and sounds to me like your “combined articulation”.
To extend this analogy to mental and physical “substances”, a “combined articulation” suggests that there must be a single overarching principle that coordinates the effects of these seemingly separate substances. That, in my mind, would describe a type of monism.
Dualism, on the other hand, would be more like electromagnetism and gravity currently appear to be: they can interact, but each exerts its effects on matter seemingly independent of the other. It would in this way resemble a true “dance”, where each partner independently contributes to the dance, rather than both being controlled by a single puppet-master.
My view of dualism is that mind and matter each have an effect on the other. Matter is affected by mind, and matter affects mind. It is impossible to predict how the dance will turn out, but one hopes for a creative and beneficent performance.
I don’t really know if Descartes would have agreed with this view or not. To this end, I ask my final question about your post. Why would the Cartesian view of ‘dividing rather than integrating mind and body’ necessarily lead to a “a false and harmful concept of the human and physical condition”?
Hi Anthony,
I appreciate your open exchange and considered understanding. Perhaps we can consider wave versus particle, Newton versus Hawking. On the one hand we have a photon responding as a wave yielding colors as a wave, on the other hand we have a photon responding as a particle yielding a diffraction pattern of the double slit experiment, not unlike the dance of electromagnetism and gravity.
Although critics of dualism have often asked how something totally immaterial can affect something totally material and how something without any physical properties has physical effects, my main concern is more about how the false concept that reality can be logically/hierarchically divided into Aristotelian categories (genus, species/Porphery’s Tree) replaces the spontaneous, undetermined, creative, dynamic and intensive nature of reality.
In every-day terms, we can label people as “dumb,” “smart,” or some other judgmental category, rather than relate to them as people who operate outside our self-determined categories of who they are–or similarly we can judge the bacteria in a petri-dish as “wrong,” or “bad,” rather than unexpected, interesting or even unknown. Dualism is vulnerable to making the error of limiting phenomena to categories, rather than being open to their wider reality: waves or particles/electromagnetism or gravity, rather than either waves or particles, electromagnetism or gravity.
The standard objection to “Cartesian” dualism, at least in Descartes’s formulation, is that it leaves it completely mysterious as to how mind and matter can interact. For Descartes, the characteristics of matter are mass and extension, whereas the characteristic of the mental is to think (or more broadly, to have conscious experiences). Moreover, everything that happens on the physical level can be explained with reference to laws that describe how objects having mass interact in space with each other.) This is known as the principle of “the causal closure of the physical’, and, while the details of the physics have changed a whole lot since Descartes’ day, my impression is that the principle is still accepted by most philosophers of mind and just about all natural scientists.
You’ve used a couple of phrases: “unification of principle” and “intricate dance,’ the first term with a negative connotation and the second with a positive connotation. So let me ask:: Does the “intricate dance” you imagine involve causal relations? If so, would the laws that describe those relations be physical laws, or some other kind of law? Or, if the interaction between the mental and the physical isn’t law-governed, and the demand for such an explanation is an example of the illegitimate demand for “unification of principle,’ what kind of description of the “intricate dance’ do you envision?
Thanks for the questions, and I am very much in the process of trying to find (at least somewhat) satisfying answers to them. I am quite open to changing my quite tentative present ideas as I partially examine my mind. So lets at least get started trying to address some your your questions.
For reasons which perhaps reflect poorly on me, I have never been impressed with the causally-closure arguments in favor of non-interaction of mind and matter. Sure it would have to be mysterious, but lots of things are mysterious before they are not.
I do not intend to give “unification of principle” a negative connotation. If believable ways are found to unify seemingly disparate principles, I will be among the first to accept them. At the moment however, I don’t see that this will always be the case, and I reserve the right to consider alternative dualities if I feel that unification is unlikely to work. I see no reason to have faith that “unification of principle” will be found in all cases. This also puts me at odds (I believe) with ancient texts such as the Upanishads, which claim (I believe) that All is One. Still, I think it likely that we have not discovered our last unifying principle (yet).
That brings me to the really interesting questions of your last paragraph. I admit to having pet theories. I will here briefly try to articulate them: I would actually like to see all consciousness as unified. “I am you and you are me and we are all together”. Further, this Universal Consciousness might in some way be able to influence the behavior of matter though the mechanism of quantum uncertainty. We know that not all events are completely determined by physical law. At the moment, we settle for explanations in terms of probability. But any law which is based on probability is not a complete law, and perhaps there exist ways for Universal Consciousness to “load the dice” in at least some circumstances. In this way, I can hope for chaos to be overcome as we become increasingly skilled at our “intricate dance”.
Let me know your criticisms, and your own ideas.
Thanks for your interesting response, Wayne. Having literally “slept on it”, I am eager to add my $0.02.
I regard labeling and categorization as a necessary part of survival in a dangerous world. Why label that bacteria on the petri dish as “bad”? Because it can kill us. This “intricate dance” that I have been talking about is not always a friendly one, and in fact can be downright terrifying. Matter’s contribution to this dance is often very repulsive. One way mind can deal with this is to place dangerous things in categorical “boxes” which it then attempts to tightly control.
But you are right. This survival strategy sometimes goes too far, and we can create rigid categories which simply get in the way of positive experience, and in fact sometimes produces it’s own negative contribution to the dance. It can get in the way of maximally appreciating and enjoying being in the Universe.
Our debate about monism and dualism is ultimately an argument about categorization, which might just have little to do about “appreciating and enjoying being in the Universe”. I seem to recall that the Buddha said as much in his “poisoned arrow” parable. When one is shot with a poisoned arrow, it is of little use to speculate about who shot it, or how the poison works, just get the damned arrow out!
But I find that I cannot avoid a certain amount of curiosity, so I will continue this game. I suspect that most of the participants on the “Partially Examined Life” enjoy this game also, which is why I am glad to participate here. There seems to be very little at stake if it turns out that I am wrong, and others can convince me of that.
Perhaps you are right that dualism is prone to making artificial and harmful distinctions which hinder our enjoyment of life more than a monistic view would. I will continue to think about that. But for now, I just want to remark about the human classification on light into colors. This appears to be a response which might have survival value, but also aesthetic value in us. And why just six or seven basic colors? (I swear that I have never been able to distinguish indigo at the blue-violet end of the spectrum. It doesn’t appear to have hindered my life.) Are there cultures which have fewer categories (blue, yellow, red maybe?) or cultures that have words for more? Inquiring minds want to know!
Hi Ana,
Thanks for this summary. You might be interested to learn that Frank Jackson no longer accepts his own very famous Knowledge Argument. He’s decided that he’s a physicalist now. You might enjoy this lecture where he talks about the mind-body problem and his current views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jocvif0JpY
In quantum mechanics, what is an “observer”? Does the observer effect mean there’s something outside the universe? http://helpmebro.com/posts/lB1DCpOHIW
All the snow has not melted within the shadows. while sunlight can cause this to show it is our consciousness and the mind that may see it as the sunlight melted the snow outside of shadows but not within the shadows because sunlight does not go in the shadows and shadow does not come in sunlight. While we examined the melting we saw shadow is not permanent if it was then eventually all the snow will melt and it will not pileup and it does not pileup anywhere. This is “what’s it like to have an experience” but only in visuals not as a part of it. The “neural correlative consciousness” the connection between the objective reality and the subjective experience for the principle that bridges the gap, and only once having that principle will we be able to explain the wonderful mystery of experience.