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Continuing on "Consciousness and Its Place in Nature" by David Chalmers (2003).
We finish Chalmers's account of the types of physicialism, then move on to dualism (including epiphenomenalism), and finally dally with panpsychism, the specialty of our guest, Gregory Miller from the Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast.
Listen to part 1 first or listen to the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. Please support PEL!
End song: "Georgia Hard" by Robbie Fulks, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #36.
Sponsor: Visit the St. John's College Graduate Institute: partiallyexaminedlife.com/sjcgi.
So is this not coming to Google Play Music or Spotify? I waited a couple of days to make sure because this happened similarly before with episode 209 on Francis Fukuyama (where you only had part two and not part one), but I’m just curious at this point. I tend not to listen on the website because it’s not the place in which I can comfortable listen. Anyway, that is all.
Occasionally I forget to check the appropriate box. Thanks for letting me know! -ML
Phenomenal episode. Epiphenomenal! You guys are astounding. So many sharp points. I have listened to it a number of times, and read Chalmers’ paper. Thank you for one of PEL’s most stimulating podcasts! Just brilliant.
I can’t discuss this or any philosophical question on the level that you guys do. I don’t have a very good grasp of the terms and concepts. I have been studying in a desultory way Advaita (non-dual) Vedanta, which has a great deal to say about consciousness. This branch of Hindu philosophy is a highly developed kind of monism, not quite Type F, if I have understood the classification properly.
Ancient Hindus and Buddhists have been debating consciousness for many centuries. There are as many approaches to the subject in the East as there are in the West, and they are no closer to general agreement as to what consciousness is than we are. There are dualists, materialists, and monists of all kinds.
Advaita Vedanta resembles Type F Monism in that consciousness (Brahman- existence/consciousness/bliss) is the substance of everything. Unlike Spinoza’s substance, which is only conscious insofar as our brains create consciousness in us individually, the substance here is itself conscious. It is existence. It is the awareness in which everything appears. Everything else, the objects that APPEAR in consciousness, is unreal. So Advaita does away with dualism by getting rid of matter. There is one mind, and it is dreaming all of this apparent duality. It is the screen on which the movie is projected. It is eternal and unchanging, pure awareness. Like in a dream, you seem to be in a situation, and everything appears to be distinct from you, the subject, and there are many objects, but they are all really you. So they are all one.
But, if I understand Advaita correctly, it is only mind and intellect which give us the feeling of “what it is like to be” what we are. Unlike in Type F, things without mind – rocks and plastic etc, – do not have any such sense in Advaita. But mind and intellect are also only objects of awareness. They are not awareness itself, and hence are temporal and illusory.
This awareness is not to be confused with the awareness we feel as distinct egos- THAT awareness is merely a reflection of this super-awareness. We cannot see this awareness as an object, because it is purely subjective. You can’t see your own eyeball except by reflection in a mirror.
The difference between this understanding and that of Buddhism, is that in Buddhism, even this consciousness is continually changing. In Advaita it cannot change; it only perceives.
The materialist seems able to dispatch this concept with the objection of deep sleep or anesthesia. How can consciousness be independent of the body, when it disappears in those two states? The Advaitan replies, “those states are not absence of awareness, but awareness of absence”. They are consciousness without objects, and pure consciousness cannot be aware of itself. They claim that since, when we awaken from anesthesia or from deep sleep, we are aware that we were unconscious for a period of time, there must have been consciousness present even in those states. Otherwise we would have been completely unaware of any missing time. Having been recently anesthetized myself, I don’t know if that flies! Ha ha!
I don’t know if this really adds anything to the discussion. And I apologize that this isn’t really the same discussion, or on the same level of the podcast. I guess I’m asking if it’s relevant that the idea of “what it’s “like” to experience anything is itself an OBJECT of awareness, so awareness itself must be separate from it. Everything – sensory impressions, physical objects, thoughts, emotions – appears in this awareness. There is nothing it is “like” to experience this awareness directly since it cannot be an object of awareness.
Ok Maybe someone will find this relevant in some way. Or, feel free to explain why this is already covered in one of Chalmer’s categories, or if it even deserves to be a category at all, at least in my cursory and incomplete articulation of it?
Thanks again!