The following is a rather simple (simplistic?) argument against certain forms of physicalism*, specifically, those forms which identify the conscious mind with physical processes of the brain. The argument starts with the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals (thank you, Leibniz), which is usually uncontroversial:
If A and B are one and the same thing, then whatever properties belong to A also belong to B.
For example, if Barack Obama and the forty-fourth President of the United States are one and the same person, then if Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, the forty-fourth President of the United States was born in Hawaii.
We can flip this principle around and use it to establish that A and B are not one and the same thing. If A has a property that B does not have, then A and B are not identical. Barack Obama has the property of being born in Hawaii. My father does not have that property (sadly). Therefore, Barack Obama is not my father.
And this sets up the argument against the form of physicalism described above: If your conscious mind is identical to the physical processes of your brain (or some subset of those processes), then whatever properties belong to the one will belong to the other. But this doesn’t appear to be the case.
The physical processes in your brain are in principle accessible to you, or me, or anyone. Brain surgeons could open up your skull and peer inside. They could hold up a mirror for you to see what they see. The proceedings could be televised to the world. With adequate technology, we could in theory peer at every neuron and every neural firing of your brain.
But your conscious experience remains only accessible to you. At no point during such a surgery would we be able to “see” what you were experiencing. In other words, your conscious mind has a property that the physical processes of your brain do not: your conscious experience is accessible only to you.
To put the argument in a slightly more formal way:
- If your conscious mind and the physical processes of your brain are one and the same thing, then whatever properties belong to your conscious mind also belong to the physical processes of your brain (or some subset thereof).
- Your conscious mind has a property that does not belong to the physical processes of your brain: it is accessible only to you.
- Therefore, your conscious mind is not identical to the physical processes of your brain.
Now, one objection would be to say that this argument begs the question: it assumes, in premise 2, that the physical processes of your brain do not have the property of being conscious. This objection, however, ignores the actual property that is being highlighted. Premise 2 doesn’t say that the physical processes are not conscious; rather, it says that they are accessible (i.e., measurable, observable, etc.–a loaded “etc.” I admit) and that your conscious mind is not accessible. Does the objector deny this?
The premise is not unreasonable, at least on the surface. Does anyone actually think that we can access or observe someone else’s conscious experience from a third-person perspective? (Transferring conscious experience–say, by stimulating your own brain with signals from another brain, giving you a parallel first-person experience–doesn’t count.) Yet third-person observability is often built in to the way we define the physical world (rightly or wrongly). We laud scientific investigation, understood as the investigation of the physical world, for the fact that it rests on observation and measurement. Appeals to invisible, unmeasurable (from the third-person perspective) entities are, it would seem, precisely what physicalists want to avoid. Yet, quite obviously, your own conscious experience is real and observable…to you–and, seemingly, only to you.
I see the debate over the argument going two directions: 1) an objector might try to reject the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals (the most common objection I’ve gotten in casual conversation), or 2) one might claim that, even though conscious properties are not accessible like other physical properties, they are still physical. This implies that consciousness is a sui generis, utterly unique physical property–a claim that strikes me as ad hoc.
Please feel free to let me know what you think in the comments below.
*I understand “physicalism” to mean, minimally, that the fundamental elements of the world are non-conscious and non-intentional. Any conscious mind would have to be made by combining non-conscious, non-intentional parts. In other words, I raise no quibble here with my panpsychist friends.
A Philosopher's Take 
Lage
March 26, 2016
“Your conscious mind has a property that does not belong to the physical processes of your brain: it is accessible only to you.”
I see this as similar to the emergent property of temperature and pressure for example. Can we measure the temperature of pressure of a single atom? If those concepts don’t make any sense with a single atom, then how can many atoms put together lead to the properties of temperature and pressure? Likewise for consciousness. It is most likely an emergent property that results from a particular configuration of matter, just as temperature and pressure result from particular configurations of matter in some system being described.
“*I understand “physicalism” to mean, minimally, that the fundamental elements of the world are non-conscious and non-intentional. Any conscious mind would have to be made by combining non-conscious, non-intentional parts. In other words, I raise no quibble here with my panpsychist friends.”
I suspect that it is also likely that if certain configurations of some substance can lead to emergent properties, then at the fundamental level, that substance does have some property that is required in order for the emergence of the new property to occur. To put it another way, even if matter isn’t conscious and intentional as we define those terms, there may be some sense that it is “conscious”, but because it is “conscious” in such a fundamental way, it is not recognizable to us as the same property we are referring to when we use the term “conscious”. The analogy carries over for atoms and temperature/pressure where there are some properties of individual atoms that necessarily lead to the properties of temperature/pressure when they are in a system described at some higher macroscopic scale.
“Does anyone actually think that we can access or observe someone else’s conscious experience from a third-person perspective? (Transferring conscious experience–say, by stimulating your own brain with signals from another brain, giving you a parallel first-person experience–doesn’t count.)”
Why doesn’t this count? Is it possible that that is sort of like asking one to show an example of pressure, but not allowing them to have multiple atoms to perform the demonstration?
“We laud scientific investigation, understood as the investigation of the physical world, for the fact that it rests on observation and measurement. Appeals to invisible, unmeasurable (from the third-person perspective) entities are, it would seem, precisely what physicalists want to avoid. Yet, quite obviously, your own conscious experience is real and observable…to you–and, seemingly, only to you.”
Only in this case, we are asking about how the fundamental means we use to investigate the physical world (conscious experience, perception etc.) works, by trying to use the very same means to do so. It is a unique question unlike any other because of this circular nature and I suspect this is one of the primary reasons for the difficulty in trying to answer this question and also a primary reason for why some people have jumped to the ad hoc conclusion of a new substance (substance dualism). We are able to see our own eye WITH our own eye (in a sense) by means of certain tools such as a mirror because all we are looking at is an object, but to “see consciousness” is asking a whole lot more, where rather than merely trying to see an object we are trying to see a non-localized PROCESS occurring that involves lots of parts working concurrently. To repeat the analogy once more, it is like trying to look at an atom and “see pressure”, which just can’t happen by nature of the process and dynamics that create it. It may also be like trying to “see an electric field” and not just its effects on other objects. It may not be possible to see an electric field in the same way we can “see an ion move within one”.
“one might claim that, even though conscious properties are not accessible like other physical properties, they are still physical. This implies that consciousness is a sui generis, utterly unique physical property–a claim that strikes me as ad hoc.”
It’s not entirely ad hoc when one has an analogous example that is agreed upon (such as individual atoms and the property that we describe as pressure emerging under special circumstances, i.e., in systems with multiple atoms). It is also ontologically simpler to assume that consciousness emerges from other physical properties of the same underlying ontological substance, even if that emergence is unique. It is actually a prediction, following from precedent, that the complexity of configurations of matter should lead to new or seemingly new properties. Take non-living versus living systems as perhaps a better example than “atoms and pressure”. Both are composed of the same underlying “inanimate” matter, but one has a complexity in its configuration that yields a new property — what we call “life”. It is far from ad hoc to assume that consciousness is just another example of this kind of emergence, even if it is as unique or more unique than the emergence of life from non-life. In terms of evolution, consciousness arising from life just as life arose from non-life is also a reasonable prediction (having a system evolve to have memory and thus the ability to predict the future and more efficiently interact with complex physical systems).
Take a look at the rest of the observable universe as well. Life is rare and unique so far as we know but it has been shown to fit perfectly in line with our physical models. Because of its rarity, do we say that life must be a result of a new/different ontological substance not present in “non-life”? Or do we uphold Occam’s razor and instead say that it probably doesn’t require any new substance but simply emerges as a unique physical property based on configurational complexity? Which choice is more ad hoc? I think the former is more ad hoc than the latter, and if you agree, then I think we should hold the idea of the emergence of consciousness and its unique properties under the same standards. My two cents…
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Gordon Hawkes
March 26, 2016
Hi Lage! Thanks for your two cents. I have a few questions after reading your response.
First, why could a single atom, presumably in a non-infinite space (even if that were the entire universe), not have a pressure? A temperature?
Second, you’re contemplation of my qualification regarding panpsychism seemed to verge on allowing for panpsychism as a possibility. Are you affirming that the fundamental particles, or whatever the minimal constituents of physical world are, are possibly conscious, though in an inchoate and rudimentary way?
Lastly, I’m going to have to reflect more on your discussion of my claim that the physicalist declaring conscious properties as “sui generis physical properties” is an ad hoc move before I respond.
Thanks again.
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Lage
March 26, 2016
Good to chat with you again Gordon!
Pressure is a description of a bulk phase for atoms, where it describes the interaction between atoms and you can’t have atomic interactions when their are no atomS to interact with each other. A lone atom doesn’t hit anything, and so can’t produce a pressure because there is no force applied to anything else over time and pressure is by definition force/Area, and 0/Area = 0 pressure. In any case, I think the “non-life to life” distinction is a better analogy and of more evolutionary relevance than the “single atom to pressure” one I gave.
As for panpsychism, it’s hard to define “mental” in such a way that one can plausibly apply it to systems without brains, which they affirm is the case with atoms — which is just one of many reasons why that position isn’t taken very seriously. But I think it is reasonable to believe that if everything is made out of one ontological substance, then one may conclude that the fundamental substance in some way subsumes all the properties it is capable of producing — even if seemingly emergent.
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Gordon Hawkes
March 26, 2016
P.S. Here’s an interesting discussion on the question, “Can a single atom have a temperature?”: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/can-a-single-atom-have-a-temperature.706480/
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Lage
March 28, 2016
I did take a look at that discussion and it seems that the general agreement is that one atom can’t have a temperature for a number of reasons. Even if it is defined in terms of the derivative of the internal energy with respect to the derivative of the change in entropy, since the change in entropy is zero for one atom, then the temperature is undefined. I’m actually surprised that someone in that forum didn’t say that (the admin who mentioned T = dU/dS). If it was because they were thinking of an atom that can go between a ground state and excited state, then one could just postulate a lone proton (ionized hydrogen atom) and then this can’t happen (I don’t think there can be any changed in entropy, which would leave temperature undefined for that one ionized atom). Anyway, interesting read either way… 🙂
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Clare Flourish
March 26, 2016
With adequate technology, we could in theory peer at every neuron and every neural firing of your brain.
But your conscious experience remains only accessible to you. At no point during such a surgery would we be able to “see” what you were experiencing.
Not having that technology, why assume that the experience would only be accessible to the subject? If every dendrite and its activity is observed in real time, as a naturalist I would assert that the emotions and sensory experience could be calculated.
If the mind differs from the brain, what else is there, and where is it?
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Gordon Hawkes
March 27, 2016
Hi Clare! Thanks for the challenging questions. Debates over the nature of consciousness typically hinge on the intuition that what we observe in the brain, the things that we can measure and quantify—that those things are, by their very nature, different than conscious experience itself. It is a difference in kind, not in degree. Many philosophers deny that intuition, and they’re willing to say that, if we were able to describe every physical detail of the workings of the brain (i.e., if we had the hypothetical technology to watch every neuron working in 3-D, technicolour display), we would, in fact, be able to “see” consciousness for what it is. So, perhaps you do not have the intuition yourself when you look at, say, neural firing patterns on a brain scan and compare them to your conscious experience of the taste of strawberries or the smell of coffee. Personally, I just can’t shake my intuition that, whatever anyone showed me in the brain, even in principle, it would be nothing like my first-person conscious experience.
Regarding the “where” and “what” of consciousness—I think that many philosophers deny the intuition referred to above precisely because it would seem to entail that consciousness would be something over and above the standard physicalist view of the physical world.
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Clare Flourish
March 28, 2016
Thank you.
I am not sure whether I should be commenting here- you will see I have only one degree, and it is not in philosophy- but I understand mapping the connectome itself- the physical object, without considering its activity- would take more information than humanity has yet produced- all those megabyte books, and all those megabyte selfies!
I feel the intertwining dendrites and their chemical reactions are so complex that the experience of a peach, or the decision- application- achievement of getting that degree are not lessened by being their material outcome. I do not explain the experience by saying, oh, it is neurons firing in the brain- but that is still what it is.
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Gordon Hawkes
March 28, 2016
You are certainly more than welcome to comment here, and I’m glad that you have! You’re response is in line with what many of the “professionals” would, and do, say. I understand you to be saying that our conscious experience, whether of a peach or a sunset or a brain freeze, when it comes down to it, just is the neurons firing (or whatever complex physical story neuroscience comes up with) in the brain.
You can see that my previous point–that the debate comes down to an intuition–is now illustrated by our back and forth. What can I say in response? I can point at microscopic activity in the brain, say potassium and sodium ions crossing the cellular membrane, and ask, “That? That right there is the experience of a peach?” To which you could answer, “Well, it may not look like it, but yes–yes it is.” (Or you could point instead to a much more complex set of physical events.) And it would seem that at that point we would be at an impasse. I’m left saying: “I just SEE that the physical process that I’m looking at is nothing like my experience of the taste of a peach, and they can’t be one and the same.” To which you (and many philosophers) could say, “I just DON’T see that it can’t be so.”
(Philosophical zombies usually stumble into the picture at this point in the conversation.)
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Lage
March 26, 2016
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I believe one atom can’t have a temperature because temperature is defined by the average velocity of the particles (or the distribution of the velocities) relative to one another. With only one atom and velocity defined relative to the frame of reference of the center of mass of the system (in this case, the one atom), then the velocity is zero and one is unable to compare it to any other particles since there are no others. So then there is no distribution of velocities either.
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keithnoback
March 27, 2016
The tautology ‘A is A’ is uncontroversial. The claim that ‘A’s are A’s’, not so much, and it seems that the argument from exclusive identities of physical and mental properties depends on the second claim. If strong supervenience holds, then A’s are not A’s as a tautology.
To take another angle on a private, mental property, I’d cite the experience of time’s passage. Certainly, it is ‘like something’ for me to pass each moment in a way which no one else can access. Nevertheless, that does not preclude my recourse to a physical (causal) explanation of my experience in terms which are agreeable – third person.
Furthermore, the state of affairs in which my private temporal experience shares a reductive explanation with a cesium atom’s vibration is valid, whether or not time is real. The case would be the same with any other physical properties and related mental properties – a little anti-realism is in order and is built in to our theorizing.
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Gordon Hawkes
March 29, 2016
Hi Keith. I don’t understand why “A’s are A’s” would not also be a tautology, even given strong supervenience. Why is that?
Regarding the experience of time’s passage, when you say that you have recourse to a physical explanation of the experience, are you saying that you have a physical explanation of consciousness (that is, the conscious experience, in this case, of the passage of time specifically), or that you have recourse to a physical explanation of the passage of time (leaving out the conscious experience of it)?
Lastly, I don’t understand how anti-realism enters the picture. (I took my time to reflect on your comment, to make sure I understood, but then realized I should just ask.) Thanks again for the comment.
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keithnoback
March 30, 2016
Gathering thoughts, 10 hour days in the clinic. Thanks for the patience.
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Gordon Hawkes
March 31, 2016
There is absolutely no rush!
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keithnoback
April 2, 2016
A nice dose of crazy talk. No alcohol was consumed in the production of:
“A is said to strongly supervene on B just in case: Necessarily for any object X and any property F in A, if x has F then there exists a property G in B such that x has G, and necessarily, if any y has G, it has F.”
If the Cesium atom (A) in the atomic clock is jogging left (F) then the associated (G) nucleus (x) is jogging left (F) and the associated (G) electron (y) in the lowest orbital is also jogging left (F).
“Cesium”, in itself, contains no such relationships. Properties of cesium supervene on other properties, but weakly, in that: They do not support the necessity which we observe in the description of the atom in the clock.
Cesium has a whole raft of entities with different nuclear and orbital configurations upon which “Cesium” supervenes, without binding association of a shared property in the supervenience base. The number 55 (protons) you say? A happy coincidence, because there are certain electro-chemical properties which supervene on the arrangement of electrons which forms around a nucleus with 55 protons. If we were to discover a new particle which could take the place of a proton in the cesium nucleus, with no effect on the electro-chemical properties of the atom in question, we would still call that atom Cesium. Just so, we happily say that an unstable atom with 137 nuclear particles is Cesium, as much as the stable atom with 133 nuclear particles.
In other words, “Cesium” cannot support a strict dependency – by itself, it doesn’t identify anything in particular. It is a point on a map rather than a locale.
The A of the particular atom in the clock, jogging left with all its little particles also jogging left, we are stuck with – if only because we are stuck with our own locale.
We are not stuck with the A of Cesium in the same way, no matter how convenient it is. Utility is not dependency, and it is possible to create a multitude of useful maps to the same place, but you must go there to be there. It is true that the map is relatively useful, but it is not real in the same way.
We engage in the same kind of description for ourselves, regarding time, as we do for the atom in the clock. We experience this moment rather than the one before or after, based upon the distinctions of a very specific local state (shit be happening, in continuity, no less). That state depends the same kind of supervenient relationships upon which the state of the atom in the clock depends – right up until I say it is mine.
But shouldn’t we expect that, from A=A? The mine-ness of an experience is entirely undifferentiated. If taken as a theory, like “Cesium”, everybody’s mine-ness seems to taint everything, and effect nothing. That’s the appeal of solipsism; it solves the conundrum of qualitativeness’ impotence. But even the solipsist acts as if the supervenience thesis were true. Mine-ness is only true locally. It cannot work as a theory. It does not map anything.
I think we must be satisfied with remaining quiet on mine-ness. It comes with the territory and we cannot make anything of it by reflection.
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Gordon Hawkes
April 4, 2016
Hi Keith,
I like to imagine physicalists like Jaegwon Kim drinking heavily when they produce their work on supervenience. I picture Kim writing with the drunken panache of a Christopher Hitchens, bolstered by the alcohol, laughing belligerently at any counterarguments. Such a mental picture allows me to rationalize his opposition to my views. “Of course he thinks this—he’s a drunk.” Likewise, it would be easier to simply respond: “Keith, stop boozing before commenting.”
Sadly, even a hypothetical ad hominem doesn’t get me out of responding to Kim’s or your arguments.
I hate to sound like the stereotypical philosopher, nitpicking little details, but I don’t think I can respond to the specifics of your Cesium example because I don’t follow (understand) your assignment of variables. As I understand it, x and y are objects (substances that bear properties), F and G are properties, and A and B are elements of x or y—perhaps themselves understandable as substances that bear properties, but subsections of x or y, or different aspects of x or y—that represent different “levels” of x or y. (I don’t know how else to understand “A” and “B” in the strong supervenience formulation.)
So, for example, I wouldn’t assign “A” to “Cesium”, but rather “x” or “y”. Put in terms of my understanding of the variables, I would assign “x” to the Cesium atom and “A” to (the “level” of) the nucleus and “B” perhaps to (the “level” of) the electrons and nucleus as a whole. “F” could be the property of 137 nuclear particles and “G” could be the property of instability. So, if x (Cesium atom) has F (137 nuclear particles) in A (level of the nucleus), then x has G (instability) in B (level of the atom as a whole).
Strong supervenience would appear to rule out substance dualism. But I don’t see that it rules out property dualism, or, for that matter, the conclusion of the argument. Supposing we apply the variables to the property dualist’s position, we might say that the object (“x”, that is, some part of the brain) has property F (say, an obviously physical property like charge) and property G (a phenomenal property, like pain). In order to assert the conclusion, the property dualist needs to show that the phenomenal property G is distinct from all physical properties. The claim of the argument was that if G were a physical property, it would share the (secondary?) property that all physical properties share—accessibility from a third person perspective. (That claim is of course controversial—some would say question-begging.)
Based on your comments about “mine-ness” and “qualitativeness”, I get the impression that you and I might have different conceptions of first-person, phenomenal consciousness. I think that “qualitativeness” does indeed “map” something–my consciousness, which is inescapable, immediate, and the “I” through which I am able identify anything. So, it is utterly unique in comparison to anything else, but still very much real. It would probably be here (I say it is “real” and theory can apply to it; you say that “we must be satisfied with remaining quiet on mine-ness”) are resting on contrary intuitions, and that is probably what our disagreement would boil down to.
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keithnoback
April 4, 2016
Oops, now you see the reason for the alcohol preface. Let me clarify. If the Cesium atom (A) in the atomic clock, supervenes strongly upon its constituent particles (B) and is jogging left (F), then the associated (G) nucleus (x) is jogging left (F) and the associated (G) electron (y) in the lowest orbital is also jogging left (F).
“Constituent particles” can sort of be dispensed with, can’t it? It is a place holder of sorts, for the actual elements of the supervenience base which are under discussion. Cesium would seem to serve the same role. Therefore, I do not think that Cesium is an object, even though we talk about the properties of Cesium. We do so in short hand.
And I agree that that is where we disagree. It seems to me that the first person quality of an experience comes along with the first person perspective. It is caused, but causes not. I don’t see how further inquiry is possible.
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keithnoback
April 5, 2016
P.S – I read the formulation “…any object x and any property F in A” as A inclusive of x and F. That makes the statement much more limited, which makes more sense to me, as it was meant to resolve the ammonia atom problem which weaker (broader, theoretical) statements allowed.
I agree about property dualism, but I can’t see how the mental property doesn’t then become an unusual physical property. It would play by the same rules. It seems doomed to inhere in your thermostat as well as your grandmother. What does it really mean in that case? Shhhhh…
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Travis R
March 28, 2016
Hey Gordon,
Glad to see you back defending dualism. I’m largely in agreement with Lage’s assessment, but I’ll add one more cent.
This seems like a key roadblock. I don’t understand why this “doesn’t count”. I’ll be very interested to see you explain that further. To assist, let me offer some thoughts on why this shouldn’t be excluded from consideration.
The vast majority of our conscious experience is representative of physical stimuli. That is, the quale of a visual experience is in accordance with the input stimuli from our eyes, and the quale of an auditory experience is in accordance with the input stimuli from our ears. But even within a physicalist paradigm these qualia are not the same as the stimuli themselves. Our nervous system instead translates those inputs into patterns and it is the patterns which make up our conscious experience. So when you require that the physicalist access an alternative conscious experience but take away the production of those patterns, you are taking away the very mechanism by which the physicalist defines conscious experience.
On a related note, with this translation process in mind, I also wonder why you think it necessary that the direct observation of the translated physical patterns should produce sensory stimuli which is then translated back into those same patterns in our own mind. You are, in essence, requiring that the physical manifestation of consciousness already have been “reverse translated” back into the physical stimuli which is then capable of giving rise to a new translation back into that same pattern. I find that to be a very odd requirement.
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Gordon Hawkes
March 29, 2016
Hey Travis. I’m just providing a free service to all the physicalists out there. If no one defends dualism then people will continue getting away with straw man arguments against it. 😉
You raise a good question. I don’t think that the “transfer of conscious experience” counts to show that we can access or observe another’s conscious experience, and your response helps me highlight why not.
No one in the debate denies that the stimuli of the brain via sensory organs, and, ultimately, the brain processes themselves, are a necessary condition for conscious experience. What is at issue is whether the brain processes and the consciousness are one and the same thing. The question is, Are the brain processes identical with the conscious experience, or is there something over and above the brain processes? (I didn’t specify in the post, but type and token identity theory are more or less the target of this type of argument.)
So, the argument, as I see it, is focused on the identification of any given physical process in the brain with the conscious experience, not on the production of conscious experience. By stimulating your own brain with the same stimuli as mine, you are perhaps generating a parallel conscious experience, but that is irrelevant to the original question: (*points at a neural process in your brain*) Is THAT physical process right there (*points at your occipital lobe*) identical to your conscious (visual) experience of reading this comment?
Notice that I’ve created the “same” conscious visual experience in your mind as in mine–you see the same words on the screen as I see. I experience the word “OCCIPITAL LOBE”; you experience the word, too. Even though I have transferred my conscious experience to your mind through these words, the problem isn’t whether we have the same conscious experience. The problem is whether the happenings in your brain ARE the conscious experience. (Hopefully this also answers your last question.)
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Travis R
March 29, 2016
Hey Gordon,
I think I understood this all along. The point of my comment was to challenge premise #2. You are claiming non-identity through the property of accessibility, but I think that the constraints you then place on accessibility are unfairly excluding the physicalist’s paradigm from consideration. If I take your constraints to their extreme then I think we’d end up at something like solipsism because nobody shares the exact same experience of any object simultaneously, thus no two objects are identical between parties. Can you define where you’re drawing the line which allows the “sameness” of experience to inform claims of identity?
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Travis R
March 29, 2016
After letting this digest I see a need for further clarification on my part. When you say:
I read an inference that if we were to do this surgery and subsequently be able to “see” the person’s experience then you would accept this as a mode of accessibility which supports the claim of identity. If that is so, then it strikes me as odd that the transfer by stimulation wouldn’t also count. Perhaps I have misread your intention and you do not actually think that opening up somebody’s head and “seeing” their experiences would support the identity claim? If that is the case, and transfer by stimulation doesn’t offer support either, then what would count? Is the contention, at its core, that there is no conceivable mechanism for establishing identity?
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Gordon Hawkes
April 4, 2016
When I say “see” in the argument, I am referring to looking with one’s eyes at the goings on in the brain. Think Hannibal Lecter contemplating his next meal. But even if we could “see” what another person is seeing simultaneously by entering in to a parallel conscious experience, say, using the transfer I disallowed, our experience would still be OUR experience, not THEIR experience—even though they are “parallel” or “matching” experiences, they are not identical (one and the same thing). Assuming physicalism, this is especially obvious: Your experience would just be the physical processes in your brain, and their experience would be the physical processes in their brain—two separate, distinct physical processes.
You asked me what would count as demonstrating identity between the physical goings on in the brain and conscious experience…and provided me with a perfect answer: “there is no conceivable mechanism for establishing identity.” That is the claim.
As I understand it, someone who advocates the argument in the post above is making a claim similar to someone who points at a Ford F-150 in a parking lot and at a Dodge Charger beside it: “Those two things are distinct, separate objects.” If you were to ask, “By what mechanism could I prove that those two things were the same?” you might receive the same reply: “Well, I just can’t conceive how you could possibly show that they are one and the same. They don’t share all the same properties. Can’t you just see it to be the case?”
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Travis R
April 4, 2016
Thanks Gordon, that’s helpful. Let’s go back to my previous comment then:
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Eugene
April 11, 2016
Hi Gordon, I didn’t read all the replies to your post, so someone might have already covered this. However I thought it might be helpful to mention that there are physicalists who tackle the problem you raise, albeit without really talking about Leibniz’s principle. They are known as the phenomenal concepts strategists. I will probably not be able to do them justice in this short comment (I do intend to keep it short!), but I shall try to outline their approach.
Consciousness, specifically phenomenal consciousness, could quite coherently be a property that has two essential modes of presentation. You are right that this might seem ad hoc, but given epistemic standards in science, it seems a more parsimonious way forward that cannot be outruled off-hand. A conscious state can be picked out by its essential property of being a physical brain state while also being picked out essentially by private subjective properties (ie. Phenomenal feels). There is no inherent contradiction in this, and if there are any, the burden of proof lies on objectors to point them out. Furthermore, dualists are apt to agree that phenomenal concepts are a special class of concepts too, so there shouldn’t be argument there.
Now, the key thing is that we are talking about a concept, and concepts do not always cohere with reality. The challenge then, is for physicalists to explain how it is that consciousness can be picked out by two essential modes of presentation. In most ordinary cases, like in the case of the identity of water and h2o, water and h2o share the contingent mode of presentation of being waterish, having water-qualities so to speak. If we were different creatures, water might plausibly appear to us with a different mode of presentation. The case with consciousness isn’t like this at all, which is why philosophers like Brian Loar state that phenomenal concepts are a special class of concepts. Pain is essentially picked out via the mode of subjective pain feelings, and if it were presented via different modes, we would not call that state in question a pain state.
Loar’s strategy is to talk about recognitional concepts, but there are other phenomenal concepts strategists who adopt different approaches. I recommend reading Loar for a full account, as I am myself not very well-versed with the forefront of debates in physicalism. Here’s the point I’m hoping to make: there is no contradiction in the concept of a scientific kind that has two essential modes of presentation (one physical and one subjective). Granted, we are only talking about concepts, so we make no claim to what actually is the case, but this is sufficient to dispute an argument from a priori grounds that phenomenal consciousness does not supervene on physical brain states. Going forward, we need empirical discovery to figure out if the concept adequately captures reality or not.
Cheers! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Your article was clear and succinct.
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Gordon Hawkes
April 13, 2016
Hi Eugene! Thanks for your comment. It was a very clear summary of the phenomenal concept strategy that some physicalists employ. For someone “not very well-versed in the forefront of debates in physicalism”, it was very well done.
I once had the pleasure of doing a directed study focused largely on phenomenal concepts, with a focus on the book Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge, Eds. Walter and Alter. David Chalmers has what I think is an excellent critique of the theory in general in that volume (you can read the article here: http://consc.net/papers/pceg.html). Thanks for the recommendation of Loar’s work, also.
I think you are right to say that there is no contradiction in the notion of “two essential modes of presentation”. But, that said, I don’t think that objectors, like Chalmers, aim to point out contradictions in the notion of phenomenal concepts, as conceived by their advocates. Rather, the most salient problem is whether they actually explain what they are setting out to explain. In other words, appeals to Ockham’s razor will only save phenomenal concepts as a theory IF they actually explain phenomenal consciousness in a physical way.
Chalmers argues that they cannot explain phenomenal consciousness in a physical way OR explain the explanatory gap (“our epistemic situation with regard to consciousness”). Where I think Chalmers’ argument is especially powerful is in the way he sets up a dilemma for the physicalist:
Horn #1: It’s conceivable that the physical world could be identical to our own while phenomenal concepts fail to obtain. (In that case, the phenomenal concepts are not physically explicable–because, in the conceivable scenario, the physical details are identical, while the phenomenal concepts don’t exist.)
Horn #2: It is not conceivable that the physical world could be identical to our own while phenomenal concepts don’t exist. (In that case, the phenomenal concepts would fail to explain our epistemic situation with regard to consciousness, because zombies, physically identical duplicates to us that lack consciousness, would share our epistemic situation with regard to consciousness. But, Chalmers argues, they don’t, so phenomenal concepts wouldn’t in that case explain our epistemic situation.)
I know there are responses that can be made to Chalmers, but, for the moment, I will stop there. Thanks again!
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Dizzy Delapore
May 31, 2016
I don’t know if any other comments have said this, but the argument begins with a false premise because the A and B are already not the same thing, if A is the observation of the workings of the brain and B is the experience of those workings. The only way to experience the workings of a person’s brain 1:1 is to be that person. That doesn’t mean mental phenomena are nonphysical. And also, we don’t know there isn’t some way of observing another’s experience via their brain, just that we are unable to presently.
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Gordon Hawkes
June 4, 2016
Hi Dizzy. Thanks for your comment! Let’s see if I can respond to your concerns: As I understand it, I am not claiming that A is the “observation of the workings of the brain”, but rather, “the physical goings-on of the brain, which all parties can observe (including the person having the experience)”. B, then, is the experience had by the person whose brain is being observed, or whose brain possesses the goings-on that are being observed. While your point is true, granted your definition of A and B, the problem still remains when we define A as the physical goings-on (processes) and B as the conscious experience itself. We can observe A, we can’t observe B. Yet some forms of physicalism claim that A and B are identical. It’s those forms of physicalism that the argument attacks.
Even if we could “enter into” someone else’s experiences, say via a brain USB cord that could port in another’s brain activity in such a way that your experience was exactly parallel–it would still be just that: a PARALLEL experience, not THEIR experience itself. In other words, there would be two separate and distinct experiences going on. It’s part of what it is to be a self, as I see it, that you have your experience, and only you can have it. If someone else had it, it would be theirs, not yours.
Please let me know what you think, or if I’ve missed your point.
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Dizzy
June 5, 2016
I guess our points are the same, but from different stances. The point is that A and B *are not* the same. You’re saying that we cannot observe a person’s mental experience by looking at their brain, and I agree with that for the most part. Even if we could translate brain activity into sound and picture, that is a second party experience, not the experience of being that person. Even if those mental phenomena were shot into a second party’s brain so that it was as though they were that person’s thoughts, the fact that they have different brains would make it so those experiences would not be equivalent. I don’t think that this establishes thought as non-physical.
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