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[Karpel Tunnel]

Consciousness (I mean phenomenal consciousness = subjective experience) is not just a functional/behavioral capacity like responsiveness to stimuli.

I think it is important to separate these things. Awareness and cognitive functions. We have no test for awareness, only tests related to functions. Thus...the following is mere speculation.

For example, plants have some form of awareness defined in purely functional-informational terms; but this doesn't mean that they also have (phenomenal) consciousness. Plant awareness is nonconscious "zombie awareness", which is objective awareness rather than subjective awareness. Plant "minds" are nonconscious "zombie minds".

There is not a shred of empirical evidence for (brain-independent) consciousness outside the animal kingdom,

There is no evidence of awareness at all. We cannot test for it. What we do is assume that things that are like us have it. In fact in science this bias was so strong that up into the 70s your career asa scientist would be jeopardized if you officially said that animals had awareness and/or cognitive functions like intentions, emotions and so on. Slowly animals were granted various forms of consciousness and against tremendous resistence. Now a similar process is happening with plants and responses are being found that are very similar to nervous system responses, clear examples of plant learning and memory and much more complicated examples of plant intelligence than were notices before. Of course, the bias still exists and there is great resistance. Hell, many non-westerners and women were barely granted conscousness for a long time.

and there are neither empirical nor rational reasons to believe that a single simple elementary particle could be a subject of consciousness/experience. How could an electron sense (see, hear, smell, taste, touch) anything when it doesn't have any sense organs (which are all themselves composed of millions of elementary particles)? Or does it have undetectably tiny eyes, ears, noses, tongues, or skins? How could an electron feel anything? Isn't it sheer nonsense to speak of a happy, sad, angry, or fearful electron? How could an electron be in a good or bad mood? How could an electron have the blues or be under the weather?

And again, cognitive functions and awareness need to be separated out. I think that the awareness is simply a facet of everything. We have a great deal of evidence that certain patterns in matter are related to certain cognitive functions. We do not know that only these patterns allow for or create these functions, but we can connect them to the functions. We have no test for awareness. We can only test for responses to stimuli, that is functions. Scientists tend to conflat functions and awareness and further to assume that consciousness is an emergent property related to certain kinds of complexity. There is absolutely no evidence of this.

[Consul]

@Consul: The identity theory of mind has issues. For instance, it claims that brains without a certain type of hardware can't experience consciousness. And this.

The early identity theorists such as Place and Smart thought that psychophysical identities are contingent, but reductive physicalists should claim instead that they are necessary. Of course, this means that there is no possible world where nonphysical minds exist, in which case substance dualism, spiritualist substance monism, and supermaterialist attribute dualism aren't only actually but necessarily false.

As for the famous multiple-realizability objection, I think reductive physicalists can deflate it successfully, especially if they are property realists who regard properties as particulars rather than as universals. Consider the following statements:

1. For all mental entities m belonging to the psychological class/kind M (or falling under the psychological concept <M>) there is some physical entity p such that m = p.

2. There is some physical entity p for all mental entities m belonging to the psychological class/kind M (or falling under the psychological concept <M>) such that m = p.

1 and 2 are logically non-equivalent, and only 1 is a proper expression of reductive physicalism; and, as opposed to 2, 1 is compatible with "multiple realizability", because the particular m's of kind M needn't be identical to one and the same particular p.

I'm also starting with the assumption that I can trust my brain.. that it has reliable cognitive abilities. I don't get that confidence from any version of materialist/physicalist explanation of consciousness that I've come across.

Why not? I hope you haven't been fooled by Plantinga's unsound antinaturalistic arguments:

"My argument will center on our cognitive faculties: those faculties, or powers, or processes that produce beliefs or knowledge in us. Among these faculties is memory, whereby we know something of our past. There is also perception, whereby we know something about our physical environment—for the most part our immediate environment, but also something about distant objects such as the sun, the moon, and stars. Another is what is often called 'a priori intuition,' by virtue of which we know truths of elementary arithmetic and logic. By way of a priori intuition we also perceive deductive connections among propositions; we can see which propositions logically follow from which other propositions. In this way, starting from a few elementary axioms, we can explore the great edifices of contemporary logic and mathematics.

There are still other cognitive faculties: Thomas Reid spoke of sympathy, which enables us to know the thoughts and feelings of other people, introspection (reflection), whereby we know about our own mental life, testimony whereby we can learn from others, and induction, whereby we can learn from experience. Many would add that there is a moral sense, whereby we know right from wrong; and believers in God may add that there is also John Calvin's sensus divinitatis or Thomas Aquina's 'natural but confused knowledge of God' whereby we know something of God. These faculties or powers work together in complex and variegated ways to produce a vast battery of beliefs and knowledge, ranging from the simplest everyday beliefs—it's hot in here, I have a pain in my right knee—to less quotidian beliefs such as those to be found in philosophy, theology, history, and the far reaches of science. In science, clearly enough, many of these faculties work together—perception, memory, testimony, sympathy, induction, a priori intuition are all typically involved. There is also the whole process of theory building, which may or may not be reducible to the previous abilities.

My argument will concern the reliability of these cognitive faculties. My memory, for example, is reliable only if it produces mostly true beliefs—if, that is, most of my memorial beliefs are true. What proportion of my memorial beliefs must be true for my memory to be reliable? Of course there is no precise answer; but presumably it would be greater than, say, two-thirds. We can speak of the reliability of a particular faculty—memory, for example—but also of the reliability of the whole battery of our cognitive faculties. And indeed we ordinarily think our faculties are reliable, at any rate when they are functioning properly, when there is no cognitive malfunction or disorder or dysfunction. (If I get drunk and suffer from delirium tremens, my perception will be impaired and all bets are off with respect to its reliability.) We also think they are more reliable under some circumstances than others. Visual perception of middle-sized objects (medium-sized dry goods, as J. L. Austin called them) close at hand is more reliable than perception of very small objects, or middle-sized objects at some distance (a mountain goat from six hundred yards, for example). Beliefs about where I was yesterday are ordinarily more likely to be true than the latest high-powered scientific theories.

Now the natural thing to think, from the perspective of theism, is that our faculties are indeed for the most part reliable, at least over a large part of their range of operations. According to theistic religion (see chapter 9), God has created us in his image; an important part of this image consists in our resembling God in that like him, we can have knowledge. In chapter 9 we saw that Thomas Aquinas put it as follows: 'Since human beings are said to be in the image of God in virtue of their having a nature that includes an intellect, such a nature is most in the image of God in virtue of being most able to imitate God.' When Thomas speaks of our nature as including an intellect, he clearly means to endorse the thought that our cognitive faculties are for the most part raliable. But suppose you are a naturalist: you think that there is no such person as God, and that we and our cognitive faculties have been cobbled together by natural selection. Can you then sensibly think that our cognitive faculties are for the most part reliable?

I say you can't. The basic idea of may argument could be put (a bit crudely) as follows. First, the probability of our cognitive faculties being reliable, given naturalism and evolution, is low. (To put it a bit inaccurately but suggestively, if naturalism and evolution were both true, our cognitive faculties would very likely not be reliable.) But then according to the second premise of my argument, if I believe both naturalism and evolution, I have a defeater for my intuitive assumption that my cognitive faculties are reliable. If I have a defeater for that belief, however, then I have a defeater for any belief I take to be produced by my cognitive faculties. That means that I have a defeater for my belief that naturalism and evolution are true. So my belief that naturalism and evolution are true gives me a defeater for that very belief; that belief shoots itself in the foot and is self-referentially incoherent; therefore I cannot rationally accept it. And if one can't accept both naturalism and evolution, that pillar of current science, then there is serious conflict between naturalism and science."

(Plantinga, Alvin. Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. pp. 311-14)

By the way, is there any supermaterialist, supernaturalist, or spiritualist explanation of consciousness?
Isn't a "supernatural science" of consciousness a nonstarter?

"Compare now what the neuroscientist can tell us about the brain, and what she can do with that knowledge, with what the dualist can tell us about spiritual substance, and what he can do with those assumptions. Can the dualist tell us anything about the internal constitution of mind-stuff? Of the nonmaterial elements that make it up? Of the nonphysical laws that govern their behavior? Of the mind's structural connections with the body? Of the manner of the mind's operations? Can he explain human capacities and pathologies in terms of its structures and defects? The fact is, the dualist can do none of these things because no detailed theory of mind-stuff has ever even be formulated. Compared to the rich resources and the explanatory successes of current materialism, dualism is not so much a theory of mind as it is an empty space waiting for a genuine theory of mind to be put in it."

(Churchland, Paul M. Matter and Consciousness. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013. p. 31)

[anonymous66]

I'm also starting with the assumption that I can trust my brain.. that it has reliable cognitive abilities. I don't get that confidence from any version of materialist/physicalist explanation of consciousness that I've come across.

Why not?

My thinking goes like this: If materialism/physicalism (M/P) is true, then we can't trust our brains to come up with any good arguments for anything, and any defense of any M/P theory of consciousness is self-refuting. I don't find the argument that, "consciousness is an illusion, but not really.. it's an illusion you can trust" to be compelling.

[Consul]

I think it is important to separate these things. Awareness and cognitive functions.

So what exactly do you mean by "awareness"?

There is no evidence of awareness at all. We cannot test for it. What we do is assume that things that are like us have it.

If by "awareness" you mean "(phenomenal) consciousness", then there is conclusive direct (introspective) evidence for human consciousness at least; and there is compelling scientific, especially medical evidence for its brain-dependence. There is also indirect, behavioral and neurophysiological evidence for nonhuman animal consciousness, from which analogical inferences regarding consciousness may justifiably be drawn. These may not give us objective certainties but probabilities at least.

And again, cognitive functions and awareness need to be separated out. I think that the awareness is simply a facet of everything. We have a great deal of evidence that certain patterns in matter are related to certain cognitive functions. We do not know that only these patterns allow for or create these functions, but we can connect them to the functions. We have no test for awareness. We can only test for responses to stimuli, that is functions. Scientists tend to conflat functions and awareness and further to assume that consciousness is an emergent property related to certain kinds of complexity. There is absolutely no evidence of this.

Yes, there is strong evidence for the assumption that consciousness is dependent on and generated by brains; so there is evidence for the assumption that consciousness is present only in highly complex biological systems, viz. organisms and their brains. To be conscious is to have a conscious life!

[anonymous66]

If we have no reason to trust our brains to give us beliefs that are true, then that's as far as we can go. M/P theories of consciousness suggests that we can't trust our brains. I know we can trust our brains, and I'm looking for a theory of consciousness that explains why that it is we can trust our brains.

[Consul]

[My thinking goes like this: If materialism/physicalism (M/P) is true, then we can't trust our brains to come up with any good arguments for anything, and any defense of any M/P theory of consciousness is self-refuting.

I don't see any plausible reason to deny that reliable cognitive faculties, reason and rationality, and scientific knowledge are possible in a world where psychological physicalism is true. Natural evolution is very well capable of producing minds/brains equipped with fallible yet reliable perceptual and cognitive abilities, by means of which we can acquire justified beliefs and knowledge.

I don't find the argument that, "consciousness is an illusion, but not really.. it's an illusion you can trust" to be compelling.

I reject eliminative materialism, because it's knowably false; but reductive materialism isn't, because it includes (reductive) realism about consciousness.

[anonymous66]

@Consul
I accept that our brains evolved and that they are "equipped with fallible yet reliable perceptual and cognitive abilities, by means of which we can acquire justified beliefs and knowledge". I just don't see any theory of mind that explains just how it is that this is the case. I mentioned my affinity for panspsychism/property dualism, and I see the lack of an acknowledgment of evolution and just how the physical brain is involved in consciousness to be a problem.

I'm not quite sure what you mean when you appeal to "reductive materialism". Even if I ignore the problem of a reliable brain, I don't find any of the arguments for any M/P theory of mind to be compelling.

[Consul]

@Consul
I accept that our brains evolved and that they are "equipped with fallible yet reliable perceptual and cognitive abilities, by means of which we can acquire justified beliefs and knowledge". I just don't see any theory of mind that explains just how it is that this is the case. I mentioned my affinity for panspsychism/property dualism, and I see the lack of an acknowledgment of evolution and just how the physical brain is involved in consciousness to be a problem.
I'm not quite sure what you mean when you appeal to "reductive materialism". Even if I ignore the problem of a reliable brain, I don't find any of the arguments for any M/P theory of mind to be compelling.

The neuroscience of the mind—the cognitive mind and especially the conscious mind—is still in its infancy, but it's making progress. There are still explanatory gaps and the hard problem of consciousness is still unsolved; but there is a scientific consensus that the brain is the organ of the mind/consciousness, and that all mental/experiential occurrences somehow result from the electrochemical activities of central nervous systems. Of course, the verb "to result from" is ambiguous between the nonreductionist/emergentist interpretation and the reductionist one; but emergentists and reductionists agree that all mental/experiential states are realized by and in the brain, and are brain states.

Rational decisions between competing metaphysical/ontological views in philosophy and the philosophy of mind in particular are or ought to be based on a cost-benefit analysis and abductive reasoning: Which hypothesis or theory provides the best, most probable or most plausible explanation and interpretation of the empirical data in the light of our scientific knowledge of the world?
As Jack Smart says: "A criterion for metaphysical truth is plausibility in the light of total science." Given this criterion, reductive materialism fares very well, better than fundamentalist/panpsychist attribute dualism, and surely much better than its antimaterialist/antinaturalist rivals.

[Dachshund]

As Jack Smart says:

Jack Smart was an Identity Theorist. His argument was that mental states/events/process in phenomenal consciousness were identical (in a strict sense of the word) with neural states/events/processessin the brain.

No one disputes that mental states/events/processess that are experienced in phenomenal (waking/dream) consciousness are correlated with biological brain states/events/process like neuronal firing, etc. But to claim a strict relationship of identity between the two is utter madness.

What Smart is saying , in short,is that if you are having a dream one night of, say, a bright yellow bird flying through a park, then that yellow dream bird( which , BTW, does exist as genuine component of reality - i.e. does actually exist as a thing while you are dreaming it) is identical to a bunch of firing neurons etc; in some particular part of your brain. But living nerve tissue in your brain is never bright yellow in colour, it has no beak or feathers nor any wings, right ? End of story.

Regards

Dachshund

[anonymous66]

As Jack Smart says:

Jack Smart was an Identity Theorist....

It was Consul who mentioned Jack Smart.

[Dachshund]

OK, sorry. My point is that anyone who argues Identity Theory is a plausible thesis in TOM is barking mad.

Dachshund

[Dachshund]

J.J. "Jack" Smart became famous overnight after he published a paper called "Are Sensations Brain Processes". This paper was a masterful exercise in rhetoric - in semantic gymnastics - but the bottom line is that qualia like, say phenomenal red ( i.e. the perception in consciousness of the colour red) are not identical in any strict sense with biological brain matter. It is that simple. To argue that they are is nonsense.

Dachshund

[Gertie]

@Consul
I accept that our brains evolved and that they are "equipped with fallible yet reliable perceptual and cognitive abilities, by means of which we can acquire justified beliefs and knowledge". I just don't see any theory of mind that explains just how it is that this is the case. I mentioned my affinity for panspsychism/property dualism, and I see the lack of an acknowledgment of evolution and just how the physical brain is involved in consciousness to be a problem.
I'm not quite sure what you mean when you appeal to "reductive materialism". Even if I ignore the problem of a reliable brain, I don't find any of the arguments for any M/P theory of mind to be compelling.

The neuroscience of the mind—the cognitive mind and especially the conscious mind—is still in its infancy, but it's making progress. There are still explanatory gaps and the hard problem of consciousness is still unsolved; but there is a scientific consensus that the brain is the organ of the mind/consciousness, and that all mental/experiential occurrences somehow result from the electrochemical activities of central nervous systems. Of course, the verb "to result from" is ambiguous between the nonreductionist/emergentist interpretation and the reductionist one; but emergentists and reductionists agree that all mental/experiential states are realized by and in the brain, and are brain states.

Rational decisions between competing metaphysical/ontological views in philosophy and the philosophy of mind in particular are or ought to be based on a cost-benefit analysis and abductive reasoning: Which hypothesis or theory provides the best, most probable or most plausible explanation and interpretation of the empirical data in the light of our scientific knowledge of the world?
As Jack Smart says: "A criterion for metaphysical truth is plausibility in the light of total science." Given this criterion, reductive materialism fares very well, better than fundamentalist/panpsychist attribute dualism, and surely much better than its antimaterialist/antinaturalist rivals.

Except our scientific knowledge of the world doesn't predict or explain conscious emergence, any more than it does eg panpsychism.


Subjective experience being associated with brains is simply something we have observed. From testing for neural correlation in humans who we can pretty safely assume to have experiential states like ourselves, we can then assume that other species with similar substrates (complex organic brains) and associated correlated behaviour, have subjective experience similarish to humans.

Those assumptions based on observation of similarity make sense, but they're not an explanation which can include or exclude less similar entities.

Even if emergence (one guess) is the right way to think about the relationship between physical processes and experiential states, we don't know what processes are necessary and sufficient, or even whether the type of substate matters. And relying on recognising human-like similarities in non-human, even non-biological, processes could easily mislead us. There's no reason to expect daffodil experiential states would be anything like a human's, so looking for close similarities doesn't help. Likewise computers, rocks, China or the whole universe.

Bottom line, without an established explanatory theory of the relationship between physical processes and experiential states (crucially the necessary and sufficient conditions), or a way to test for experiential states, any or none of current speculations could be on the right track.

The fact that our usual ways of knowing stuff (science) and our ability to test competing hypotheses don't seem to help us here, should make us cautious about claiming we know what is (currently at least) unknowable. Chalmers calls it 'the hard problem' precisely because it doesn't seem amenable to our usual methodologies. Which suggests there might well be more going on than we realise, perhaps are even equipped to recognise or understand.

[Gertie]

If we have no reason to trust our brains to give us beliefs that are true, then that's as far as we can go. M/P theories of consciousness suggests that we can't trust our brains. I know we can trust our brains, and I'm looking for a theory of consciousness that explains why that it is we can trust our brains.

Not exactly a response to your question, but IIT is an attempt to to start from the directly knowable (experiential states) to work out what physical processes are required to result in experiential states. Anyway you might find it interesting - me I get lost when the maths comes in! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrate ... ion_theory

[anonymous66]

If the assumption is that the physical is what is real, and consciousness reduces to the physical... then consciousness must be some kind of illusion created by physical "stuff".

If the thinking is that both the physical and consciousness are real, as Consul seems to imply, then that sounds like dualism. And that is what seems likely to me. Property dualism- consciousness is a basic property of this universe that we find ourselves in. It's not a complete theory. But it's a theory worth pursuing. Consciousness is certain. If I know anything I know I'm conscious.