Materialist Conceptions of Mind, Part III: Self-Monitoring Brains and Strange Loops

This will be my last post before the start of the new academic semester—at which point most (if not all) of my blog posts will be deliberately paired with topics I’ll be covering in my philosophy of religion class. But before that starts I want to conclude my series of posts on materialist conceptions of consciousness.


In this final post in the series I want to consider what I’m calling “perspectivalism”—roughly, the idea that consciousness is to be identified with the way that brain states “look” from a distinctive internal perspective. But on this definition, perspectivalism needn’t be a materialist conception of consciousness at all.

A non-materialist version of perspectivalism would hold that consciousness is the way that brain states look to a “subject” that isn't reducible to anything physical. On this view, while every conscious state is correlated with a physical state of the brain, and while changes in the brain will always bring about corresponding changes to consciousness (in other words, while this theory of consciousness fully aligns with everything that science tells us about the relationship between mental and neurological phenomena), consciousness does not arise without the introduction of a non-material subject. Such non-material perspectivalism, as defined, does not specify what this non-material subject is (and hence allows for numerous variants), but only what it is not: any component or part of the brain.

A materialist version of perspectivalism, by contrast, shares the idea that states of consciousness are the way that brain states “appear” from a distinctive internal perspective. But the “observer” in this case--that which provides the perspective on the brain states--is the brain itself. In other words, consciousness emerges when the brain begins to monitor its own activity—when brain states begin to represent brain states.

To unpack this idea as best I can, I want to recall a comment from my previous post—which at the time was little more than an aside. The comment is one I made in relation to my extended example of the two instantiations of the photo of my children—one a “hard copy” on my desk, the other an electronically produced image on my computer screen. The image, I said then, is an emergent property of two disparate physical substrates. But then I made the following remark:

Arguably, the emergent property in either case doesn’t really “emerge” in the absence of an observer who has the capacity to find in the similar organizational structures of the two physical substrates a shared meaning. In other words, at least in some cases, emergence requires a subject who is capable of meaning-attributions. Without that observer, we have an arrangement of inkblots or of illuminated pixels, but we simply don’t have an image of my children. That requires someone to find meaning in the pattern—and neither a piece of photo paper with ink on it nor a computer can do that.

The idea here is that the common feature of both physical systems doesn’t really come into existence apart from a meaning-bestowing observer. The idea I want to follow up on here is that consciousness is what certain neurological patterns “become” to the right kind of meaning-bestowing observer—and that the brain itself is capable of being such an observer. Put more simply, conscious states emerge from the physical system of the brain when that brain “monitors” its own processes (in the sense of tracking and modeling them). On this view, it should be clear that perspectivalism is really a distinctive species of emergentism--but one which adds an additional element that is intended, presumably, to help close the explanatory gap that a bare emergentism leaves us with.

What I want to do in this post is explain why such self-monitoring activity cannot solve the problems that I have articulated with respect to the previous species of materialism (identificationism and emergentism). In other words, the arguments I will be developing against perspectivalism will presuppose the conclusions I have reached on the basis of arguments in the previous two posts. As such, I want to offer an initial qualifying remark about what I do and don’t believe I am accomplishing in the current post.

Specifically, I am well aware that the arguments already laid out against identificationism and perspectivalism are not convincing to everyone--and I don't think this post will add anything new to those arguments (and hence won't do anything to convince those who are skeptical of them). My aim here is simply to show that if you find these arguments convincing, then the same basic concerns that lie behind your rejection of identificationism and emergentism will lead you to reject material perspectivalism as well. Material perspectivalism doesn’t add anything new that can rehabilitate materialism if the problems with identificationism and emergentism are granted. In short, what I hope to show in this post (even to those who don’t find in the earlier species of materialism the same problems I find) is that those who do find the earlier species of materialism problematic in the ways I highlighted won’t discover in perspectivalism a way around those problems.

With this in mind, consider the hypothesis that consciousness is what happens when the brain monitors its own activity, so that its brain states become the object of the brain’s own scrutiny. Just as the image on a computer screen acquires a distinctive emergent property by virtue of there being a meaning-bestowing observer to attach meaning to the pattern on the screen, perhaps consciousness is a property that emerges when the brain observes its own states.

There are two main objections to this view. First, in order for the brain to serve as an observer that bestows meaning on its own brain states, we must solve the riddle of how a physical system can generate semantic content. In other words, we must first close the explanatory gap in order for this self-monitoring process to do the job we need it to do. But the job we were hoping the self-monitoring process would do is close this very gap. But if the gap must first be closed in order for the self-monitoring system to close the gap, it follows that the self-monitoring system cannot be what closes the gap.

And so, if you think that the explanatory gap between neurological systems and conscious states is the kind of gap that can’t be bridged without the addition of some external element—that is, if you accept the core objection to emergentism—then the materialist version of perspectivalism won’t work. Perspectivalism, it seems, adds nothing to the explanatory picture that will be convincing to those who are skeptical of the emergentist hypothesis.

The second problem with perspectivalism connects up with the chief objection to identificationism. As a reminder, that objection holds, in brief, that a conscious state cannot be identified with its corresponding brain process because the conscious state (the “quale”) has relational properties that the brain process do not have. For example, I can be familiar with the conscious state (the way the wasp sting on my ankle feels) even though I am entirely unacquainted with the underlying brain state. (The argument is more complicated than this—but for a fuller treatment, see the first post in this series and the subsequent discussion).

At least at first glance, it seems that materialist perspectivalism can avoid this problem with identificationism. After all, for perspectivalism the quale isn’t identified with the underlying brain state at all. Instead, it is identified with the way the brain state appears to a brain that’s engaged in self monitoring activity. And there is no difficulty with an appearance from a certain perspective having properties that the underlying cause of that appearance lacks (or vice versa). I can be immediately acquainted with the way that the northern lights look without knowing anything about the underlying physical reality (and vice versa).

But here’s the problem: on this perspectival view, it’s true enough that a quale is not identified with the corresponding brain event. But it is identified with a second-order brain event—one in which parts of the brain are undergoing brain processes in response to other brain processes.

But if this is right, the original problem just crops up at the next level. The reason why we couldn’t identify the quale with the first-order brain event was because we’re acquainted with the quale even when we are entirely unacquainted with the underlying brain event. But surely the very same thing can be said about the second-order brain event, generating the very same problem. One could try to perform the same move again, by identifying the quale with the way that the second-order "monitoring" brain event looks from a certain vantage point—but if that vantage point is the one provided by a third-order brain event, we’d just be moving the problem up one more level without making any progress. The only way to stop this endless buck-passing would be either to abandon perspectivalism at some point (in which case why not abandon it right away?), or to ground consciousness in the way that a brain state appears to a subject that isn't reducible to a brain state (in which case we’ve embraced non-materialist perspectivalism).

What all of this means is that if one accepts the problem with identificationism, then perspectivalism won’t get us any closer to an adequate materialist account of consciousness.

But before leaving perspectivalism altogether, I want to briefly consider Douglas Hofstadter’s “strange loop.” Here, I must confess that I haven’t had the time to study Hofstadter closely, so there may be something important I’m missing. If so, please pipe in with appropriate comments. In any event, as I understand it the basic thrust of Hofstadter’s idea is that the brain is designed to make representations of objects via various neurological mechanisms—but that one of the things it makes representations of is itself. But in representing itself, it includes in that representation the other representations—including its self-representation. The result is a kind of feedback loop out of which consciousness emerges—like the noise produced when a microphone is held up to the speaker to which it is connected, or the strange visual images that result when a video camera is focused narrowly on a monitor that is displaying a live feed of what the camera is filming.

Now I must confess to finding something really cool and wondrous about these kinds of feedback loops. As I child I often wondered what would happen if one put two mirrors up against one another and somehow managed to get enough light in there to make visual reflection possible—without introducing the lamp itself or any other object that might be reflected. I had fantasies that this would open up a window into some parallel dimension—if only one could get in there to see it (which, of course, couldn’t be done without introducing an object that would then shatter the magic).

The closest I got to achieving this fantasy was to enter the mirror room that’s on display at the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY (where I grew up). The interior of the room is entirely mirrored—walls, floor, ceiling—so that when one stands in it one sees endless corridors in all directions, with oneself endlessly repeated. There’s also a table and chair made of mirrors, but I always found that element distracting. In any event, I remember thinking that if only I could make myself invisible (and get rid of the mirror table and chair) I’d be able to produce the conditions of infinite-reflection-of-nothing that would open a window to another world.

But as appealing as this infinite feedback loop idea is, I don’t see how it can generate anything really new. Without any light to reflect, two mirrors pressed against each other won’t produce any kind of mutual feedback. A speaker that produces no sounds of its own won’t cause feedback when the microphone is brought close to it unless there are ambient noises in the room to be magnified through the feedback. Likewise for the monitor-and-video loop. These loops need something to work with—and while they can produce a kind of infinite magnification of what is given to them, can something new really arise from them? I don’t see how.

Now, if we accept Chalmers’ view that there are latent “consciousness” properties in matter, I can imagine how a feedback loop of the sort Hofstadter describes might “magnify” these properties—producing discernible consciousness in the brain out of indiscernible “traces.” But in the absence of this Chalmerian assumption, I don’t see how an infinite feedback loop can give us anything new. And so, unless the explanatory gap I talked about in the previous post can be closed in some other way, I don’t see how the mere introduction of a feedback loop can close it. Such a feedback loop might explain many things about the operation of the brain and identity-formation—but it seems that it can explain aspects of our conscious experience (such as our sense of self) only on the assumption that we already have conscious experience.

In short, as an account of the origins of consciousness, I don’t see how the feedback loop can be explanatorily significant. While I think that our brains do engage in self-monitoring activity—and while I think that this self-monitoring activity does generate feedback loops that are going to have interesting results that may explain various features or aspects of our conscious life—I don’t see how they can account for consciousness itself.