Thursday, February 17, 2011

The Final Outcome Argument

Theists often claim that naturalism strips life of positive meaning by implying that all of our activities, all of our aspirations and efforts, all of our accomplishments, are in the end swallowed up by the void. Not only does every human life end in death (meaning oblivion or non-existence); but every civilization collapses, and even the Earth itself will come to be destroyed, and the universe become a lifeless expanse of so much celestial flotsam.

William Lane Craig expresses this objection in the following terms:

Scientists tell us that everything in the universe is growing farther and farther apart. As it does so, the universe grows colder and colder, and its energy is used up. Eventually…there will be no life, only the corpses of dead stars and galaxies, ever-expanding into the endless darkness and the cold recesses of space, a universe in ruins… If there is no God, then man, and the universe, are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death row, we stand and simply wait for our unavoidable execution. If there is no God, and there is no immortality, then what is the consequence of this? It means that the life that we do have is ultimately absurd. It means that the life we live is without ultimate significance, ultimate value, ultimate purpose.

In his book, Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe, philosopher Erik Wielenberg responds to this objection to naturalism (as well as a number of others). He calls Craig’s argument “the final outcome argument” against the meaningfulness of life. And its key premise, Wielenberg points out, is that the value that attaches to something’s final state is the value that we should attach to the whole thing. This, Wielenberg rightly notes, is a mistake. If some activity is intrinsically worthwhile, then it remains intrinsically worthwhile even if it comes to an end. If my life is full of such worthwhile activities, then my life has value—intrinsic value—even if it should come to a final and irrevocable end.

Wielenberg’s point can be made by thinking of matters in reverse: If my life has no value if it ends, then it will have no value if it is made endless. An infinite sum of zeros has the same value: zero. And so, for an immortal life to have value, the finite slices of that life must have value too—which implies, in turn, that a mortal life can have value even if what lies beyond the boundary of death is nonexistence.

In short, this particular objection to atheistic naturalism isn’t very strong. If life can have value at all, then it can have value if it comes to an end. And so belief that life comes to an end—in the limited sense of a particular organism’s inevitable death, or in the cosmic sense of the universe winding down until it, too, is dead—is not as such a reason to think life has no significance, value, or purpose.

But perhaps Craig, and others who put forward arguments of this sort, just aren’t expressing themselves very well. Maybe the problem isn’t that, if life and love and laughter must end, then they have no value while we are living and loving and laughing. Maybe the worry is better expressed in terms of Karl Barth’s Das Nichtige—the “nothingness” that lies beyond the boundaries of finite existence. This is a concept I’ve talked about before. For Barth, Das Nightige has a power, a force, that no finite creature can ultimately confront head-on without the support of an infinite God. The problem, put subjectively, is this: If you look beyond your limits, what you are not utterly dwarfs what you are. Perhaps the problem that Craig and others like him are pointing to is this: Given a naturalist universe, life and love and laughter, while intrinsically valuable, are a speck in an endless ocean of non-life, non-love, non-laughter. The value of these goods is utterly swamped by that which is entirely devoid of value, making the goods of this life of trivial significance in comparison. It’s not just that you’re dead for a lot longer than you’re alive. It’s that your dead forever. The finite value of one’s life, set against this infinite void of non-value, has a relative significance that is infinitesimally small.

In a way, of course, the same can be said of a theistic universe: Whatever value my existence has, it is swamped by the infinite value of God. But in that case, what dwarfs the finite value of my existence is positive value—and so the ultimate message is that value wins. Not my value, but value. Not my goodness, but goodness. And so, if I stop being self-absorbed and simply treasure the good wherever it is to be found, then I find myself in a world overflowing with the good, overflowing with significance. The same is not true in a reality where there is no infinite good, no infinite reality, to set against the non-being that swamps the finite reality of each creature here below. In that case, to live beyond myself, to embrace ultimate reality and live for the whole, is to live as if all positive values are, relatively speaking, trivial.

And so, in that case, I need to resist all temptation to set my worldly life against reality as a whole, to attend to its relative significance—because to do so is like stepping back from a patch of color to see that it is but a speck set against an endless sea of blackness. To appreciate the color, I have to come in close, so that the patch fills my entire vision, so that I don’t see that which swamps it. Coming in close doesn’t mean paying attention only to my own life, or only to human life. It could mean immersing oneself in the diversity of life on earth, studying it, focusing on it. Or it could stretch beyond the boundaries of this planet to the teeming galaxies and mysteries of time and space and the origins of the cosmos. What it won’t allow is dwelling on what lies beyond the borders of this finite treasure of goods. Because what lies beyond a finite reality—in the absence of an infinite source of being such as God—is the all-consuming maw of Das Nichtige.

Given a theistic universe, stepping back and taking in the whole has a different implication. Doing so will, as before, render that patch of color just a speck—but it will be a speck in an endless sea of vibrant color and beauty, one tiny fragment of a vast masterpiece.

But let’s assume that none of this is sufficient to strip life of meaning on naturalistic assumptions. Let us suppose that naturalists can preserve a sense of subjective meaning by, in effect, saying, “The great sea of nothing is nothing, and hence nothing to worry about.” If there’s nothing beyond the patch of color, then staying focused narrowly on the patch of color is staying focused on what is. And that is where we should stay focused. To set what is against everything that it is not is to set it against what we should ignore because, well, it’s nothing worth paying attention to.

If this approach can be defended successfully, then the modified version of the “final outcome argument” might admit of an effective naturalist response. Whether such a response can be adequately developed I won’t pursue here, because there is one other point I want to make about Wielenberg’s response to the “final outcome argument”: it succeeds in doing more than neutralizing a specific theistic objection to naturalism. It also neutralizes a common naturalist objection to theism, one that Wielenberg himself articulates. Here’s how Wielenberg puts it:

If we know that God will make the universe perfectly just in the end, we lose one reason for trying to promote justice, namely that if we do not, no one will—though we still have a self-interested reason to promote justice, since presumably God rewards the just.
This idea is sometimes put less cautiously that Wielenberg puts it. Essentially, the atheist asks, “If God’s providence ensures that justice will prevail in the end, then why should anyone on earth care about promoting justice? Let God do it! And if there is a reason to promote it, it can only be because we don’t want to be on the receiving end of the uglier side of God’s justice. But if we promote justice simply because we don’t want God to smite us, are we really being just at all? We’re just doing the right thing out of fear of punishment. Caring about justice simply can't be a motive for theists to pursue it, since they think it will be realized even if they do nothing. And so theists who do pursue justice can only be doing it for self-serving motives.”

But notice, if the value of something here and now isn’t erased by its coming to an end, then the disvalue of injustice here and now isn’t erased by its coming to an end. An assurance that all will be well in the end doesn’t erase the reasons we have for seeking to eliminate or reduce the severity of the evils that afflict living creatures in this life. Even if we live in the assurance that God ultimately will realize perfect justice, that doesn’t change the fact that there are injustices here and now and that it would be better here and now if there weren’t.

And so, those who care about justice would have a reason to seek to reduce or eliminate the injustices that prevail around them, even if they believe that there is a divine guarantee that all injustices will be eliminated in the end. More broadly, theists have reasons to care about reducing earthly suffering, promoting happiness, and making the world a better place—even if they’re universalists who think that in the end, all will be saved, every tear will be wiped away, and the lion will lie down with the lamb.

If this is right, then ultimately our conclusion should be this: Whatever lies beyond this life and the finite boundaries of the physical reality in which we live, whether it be Das Nichtige at one extreme or the infinite and all-redeeming God at the other, the intrinsic worth of goods in the life and the intrinsic disvalue of evils provide reasons here and now to act.
 
(Assuming, of course, that there can be intrinsic goods and intrinsic evils if Das Nichtige is all that lies beyond the borders of physical reality--but for the moment, at least, I will grant Wielenberg's assumption that this can be true even if reality is conceived in broadly naturalistic terms).

198 comments:

  1. Hi, Eric-

    This opening line of thought is uncomfortably close to a very social argument- that I only have value if I have high status, or am attached to the highest status group, the biggest group, the most powerful group, etc. If I attach myself to god, I am part of the biggest, baddest group in town, making me feel valuable.

    It sure comes naturally, but the progressive social thinker needs to validate and support other sources of meaning/value, like being a sentient being, for instance.

    Additionally, it is sort of funny to be arguing for the valuing utility of a god whose existance is far from certain, and then treating that as an argument for its existence. I mean- we like feeling valuable and all, but do we have to give up our rational faculties?

    Additionally, if theists can help themselves to "the value of something here and now", then atheists can as well- this is the key to seeing values being created before our eyes, out of our own desires and needs (justice, fairness, happiness, etc.). Looking for value under the theistic totem turns out to be pretty much beside the point. What good is the imagined ultimate justice of the beyond, other than as another artistic expression (or, if you prefer, Platonic expression) of the values that actually arise from our own biological/cultural baggage and apply in our very real world?

    Thanks for posting!

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  2. I'm always puzzled by the kind of argument (or “objection”) that Craig seems to offer against naturalism. If I get it right, it can be sketched very roughly as follows:

    1. Let's assume naturalism.
    2. Then, life is totally meaningless (among other things).
    3. But this final outcome is untenable.
    4. Therefore, naturalism must be rejected.

    Wielenberg appears to criticize (2) and I of course agree that life can be meaningful without God. But my puzzlement relates to the alleged inference from (3) to (4). Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that naturalism implies all that Craig claims, that it makes life totally meaningless, that it forces us to confront the “nothingness” of the universe, leading us to absolute despair, and so forth (add what you wish).

    How is that an argument against naturalism? That we can't accept such consequences, that it makes life unbearable, and so on, has no bearing at all on the truth or falseness of the an hypothesis. I simply can't understand how our feelings about this can be used as a criterion of truth.

    At most, such arguments can be used to argue for the value of belief. If the choice is between despair and belief, then by all means we should choose belief. If, as a personal choice, one decides to believe because it makes his/her life more enjoyable, fine.

    But if the point is to find truth about reality, I don't see how this can work. The same is true for similar arguments used against theism, of course (as you point out).

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  3. Hi Eric

    The thing that strikes me here is this culturally freighted judgement that a speck of colour set against a background of nothingness is somehow less beautiful/inspiring/etc that a background of vibrant colour. Well, maybe, for some people, sure. For me, it is the possibility of the nothingness beyond that elevates my life to something worth living. I don't of course suggest anyone else see it this way, but the fact that it can be seen this way (and it really can) is I think a serious problem for the Karl Barth line, which seems to collapse into a rather brave assertion about human psychology.

    JP, are you arguing there is some measure of truth that extends beyond the merely pragmatic? I want to believe there is, but have never been able to find a way of establishing the point. If all truth is measured pragmatically, (which I resist emotionally but am drawn to rationally) then untenable and untruthful may be the same thing?

    Bernard

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  4. Hi Bernard,

    I was trying to point out that, however emotionally unacceptable the consequences of an hypothesis may be, it is no argument against the hypothesis. I am not saying that naturalism (in some form) involves the rather negative aspects that critics say it does. Only that, even it it did, that would be no argument against it. I entirely agree when you say that it is the possibility of the nothingness beyond that elevates my life to something worth living.

    As for truth, I'm not sure what you mean by “extending beyond the pragmatic”. What I can say is that I don't know how to make sense of a “truth” floating in the air without any way to relate it to something else (at least in principle).

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  5. JR--Walter Stace, in his essay, "Man Against Darkness," essentially adopts the position that naturalism is (a) true and (b) at least problematizes the questions of meaning and may entail that life is stripped of meaning. In other words, Stace thinks naturalism is true and when considering its implications does not rule out the possibility that its truth strips life of meaning.

    To be able to say this, he presumably has to assume that there is nothing intrinsic to the concept of "truth" that precludes something being both true and absurd. That is, there is no conceptual contradiction the way there would be if you said that something is fully round and fully square.

    To assess this assumption, we'd need to unpack the concept of truth. And here, of course, we have to recognize that there are different sorts of truths, which are made true by different things. What makes it true that it was snowing when I flew through Detroit yesterday is different from what makes it true that 2+2=4, and both are in turn different from what makes it true that the $5 bill in my wallet is worth less than the $20 bill.

    I have argued elsewhere that worldviews are different from scientific hypotheses in a number of important ways--which means that it is at least possible that what makes the former true is going to be very different from what makes the latter true. Naturalism is a worldview--meaning, among other things, that it is a way of interpreting the whole of experience which would still be possible if the content of experience were very different from what it in fact is (whether naturalism is consistent with ANYTHING we might observe is a question I won't take up here). Furthermore, as I would argue, the same body of experience can be interpreted naturalistically and theistically (or in other supernatural terms).

    In short, naturalism neither specifies a particular experiential content nor is it demanded by a particular experiential content. As such, naturalism is not saying that the field of experience looks like THIS rather than like THAT, and so it's truth-maker can't be the content of experience (although experience does put limits on worldviews in such a way that endorsing a particular worldview amounts to ruling out SOME things we might experience).

    The question, then, is whether there is some defensible account of what worldviews are ABOUT--and hence what would qualify as the truth-maker for a worldivew--such that a worldview is falsified if it entails that the life of the one living out the worldview is meaningless or absurd.

    I wouldn't want to rule out the defensibility of such an account, but it's certainly true that Craig has not PROVIDED any such account.

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  6. Hi, Eric-

    I'd suggest that the concept of "absurd" is in more need of definition than that of "truth". Second, the claim that any experience / phenomenon can be interpreted theistically as well as naturalistically flies in the face of the claim that scientific hypotheses are not in play. The theistic / supernatural interpretation involves hypothetical causes- causes that may be unprovable, but all the same are scientifically structured and frankly in opposition to those that are known to actual science.

    There are no two ways about it, other than in the far-off realms of complete unknowns and ultimate causes, where hypotheses may abound in the absence of knowledge. The bottom line is that insofar as theology sets its store by the unkown, it can not lay any claim to "truth". And insofar as it sets its store by the known, it contradicts science and exposes itself as false rather than true.

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  7. Eric,

    I think the argument from meaning against naturalism works on two levels.

    First, naturalism describes a mechanistic universe in which what is really happening is mechanical levers purposelessly pushing on mechanical cogs. Such a universe is devoid of any meaning no matter how complex the evolved machinery. Naturalist may truthfully say that they see meaning in their temporal lives, but given how the reality they believe in is, they are just imagining things. So it’s not the final state that our universe will reach (according to our best scientific understanding) which renders a naturalistic reality meaningless, but how naturalism describes the very nature of reality here and now.

    Secondly, there is the issue of the final outcome which William Lane Craig likes to mention. If naturalism is true and the final state of the universe is one where all structures disintegrate then all that is good will be lost. On theism, on the contrary, nothing that is good will be lost. In that sense then theism entails a quality of meaning which naturalism simply lacks, which is the quality of eternal value, of value that has the perfection of indestructibility. Which of course fits extremely well with theism, according to which all that is good is rooted in the eternal nature of God.

    But why should the naturalist care about the issue of meaning one way or the other? I think the reason is this: One basic fact of the human condition we all share is that we perceive much more than physical phenomena. The data we have for making sense of our life goes far beyond the data that science uses. For example, part of what we perceive (sometimes with universal and crystal clarity) are moral truths. Similarly, I say, we perceive that our life does have meaning, that what is good (including the good we create in our life) possesses a quality of meaning which does not exist in a naturalistic reality.

    Now the naturalist may choose to ignore these problems and the non-physical data we have access to, or else hope, against all evidence, that in the future a way will be found to fit the relevant facts within a naturalistic understanding of reality. What the naturalist may not, I think, reasonably hold is that the argument from meaning is vacuous. I think theism has here yet another good argument against naturalism, and thus for a fundamentally personal understanding of reality.

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  8. Dianelos FTW. That's good stuff.

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  9. Hi, Dianelos

    "Such a universe is devoid of any meaning no matter how complex the evolved machinery. ... So it’s not the final state that our universe will reach (according to our best scientific understanding) which renders a naturalistic reality meaningless, but how naturalism describes the very nature of reality here and now."

    You might be surprised to hear that this view seems very heavily biased. You only seem to regard ultimate or externally-assigned values as meaningful, (however imaginary they may be), and dismiss our earthly concerns as "temporal".

    Things like life and death, love and hate, freedom and oppression.. those don't come up to scratch as "meaningful" in your book. Well, I would challenge you to regard your own life in this way- as meaningless up to and until some union with the godhead or whatever your image of post-death nirvanic meaning may be.

    Isn't it simply gratuitous to assume that every value you manage to have was infused from above/beyond? Can't we love life just because we are naturally built to love life? It is a bit like the homosexuality discussion. Once we realize that desires of these deep kinds are built-in and not matters of biblical instruction or perverse choice, we can call off the judgemental hounds and accept this instance of meaning-formation as socially acceptable, along with our kaleidoscope of other self- and socially- generated meanings.


    "In that sense then theism entails a quality of meaning which naturalism simply lacks, which is the quality of eternal value, of value that has the perfection of indestructibility."

    This is all very fine, unless the value you so blithely claim as indestructable turns out to be completely destructable and human-made. It is like all Platonic ideals- productions of our own minds which we love so dearly that we project them outward as "real", and then by our weakness for abstraction, ultimately as "realler than real". Nope- abstractions are our mental furniture, you will never find them "out there".


    "What the naturalist may not, I think, reasonably hold is that the argument from meaning is vacuous."

    But where is the argument? You claim that you see meaning arising from your model of reality, from what look to me to be frankly imaginary external sources. The naturalist sees meaning arising out of hers, from known biological sources. You claim that naturalists have no meaning by your lights. That hardly speaks to whether their model is true or not- only whether you like what it says. You don't, and you are welcome to live in your reality, and defend it in a philosophically honorable way. Which is to say that you enjoy it more than the other model of reality which has better evidence behind it. There is probably some school of "philosophy"- which might call itself theology- which values feeling good over being true, and that would be the proper home for this kind of thing.

    cont...

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  10. The problem is that until something like god is actually demonstrated as being real, naturalism contains theism because everything that theism comes up with is a human psychological creation, from the longed-for appeasement/union with the über-father to the projection of love as something coming from outside the cosmos. It is all so blatantly obvious, really.

    You would say the converse, obviously.. that god caused everything including biology and psychology, so theism contains naturalism. We have evidence for the mechanism, naturalism, biology and psychology part, not for the god part, however. So the weight of evidence goes all in one direction for the time being, including especially the human creation of all aspects of theology, including gods, scriptures, miracles, etc.

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  11. Hi Dianelos,

    Good to read you again.

    First, I think we have to beware of straw men. I'm not sure any one's ideas here would fit your description of naturalism. But let put this aside for now.

    You describe what you perceive as problems with naturalism, particularly on the question of meaning. Let's assume all the consequences you mention are true (to be sure: I don't agree with you on that). You then argue like this: I perceive meanings in life, moral truths, the naturalist's universe is absurd, and so on, therefore naturalism is false.

    But this is a complete non sequitur. What you find desirable, your feelings (as well as mine) are irrelevant to the nature of reality. That is, until you establish something like the following: (1) feelings and desires are, somehow, attuned to ultimate reality; and (2) your feelings and desires are more significant than those of others. You need (2) of course because many (some no fools) have completely different feelings about reality (e.g. absolute moral values) – which one, if any, is right?

    What you may have is an argument for the value of belief itself; that belief is a good thing because it makes for a better life. Whether this works or not is another question but, it it does, is has no bearing at all on the truth of the beliefs.

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  12. Hi Eric.

    I've been reading TPTLB for quite some time but have never commented. I just wanted to drop you a line and let you know that it has appeared on psnt.net‘s list of Top Ten Most Irresistibly Brilliant Blogs:

    http://psnt.net/blog/2011/02/6991/

    Thanks for doing what you do.

    Paul Wallace

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  13. hi JP:

    The gist of your particular objection seems to me to be this: one cannot conclude that IF some condition X is terrible THEN X is false. Maybe reality just sucks and that's that. The objection seems reasonable to me, but I am wondering if there might be a PRAGMATIC justification for accepting the principle. Suppose it's an open question whether or not God exists, and suppose there is no way to objectively answer the question, or even show that God probably doesn't exist. That same thing is true about all kinds of metaphysical claims, the kind of claims that brand new philosophers love to think about. Sometimes philosophers agree there's no way to settle the issue, but argue for their side on the grounds that it makes possible some thing they'd like to be able to do. For example, I've heard people on this blog argue for accepting the results of inductive reasoning on the grounds that unless we accept inductive reasoning we could never get around in the world at all. So why couldn't a person be pragmatically justified in accepting the idea that God exists on the grounds that if God didn't exist, said person could not believe that life was ultimately meaningful?

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  14. Hi JP,

    You write: “ First, I think we have to beware of straw men. I'm not sure any one's ideas here would fit your description of naturalism. But let put this aside for now.

    Well, that’s an important issue to consider in any context where one discusses arguments against naturalism. By “naturalism” I mean any ontology according to which reality is ultimately of a mechanical nature. By “mechanical” in this context I mean that reality evolves by blindly/purposelessly following some mathematical formula (which need not be deterministic but may include a probabilistic term). For example, so-called scientific naturalism, i.e. the widespread view that the physical sciences describe reality and indeed all of reality, comports with that definition. But naturalism, as I define it, is a much broader view than scientific naturalism. For example, naturalism, as I define it, allows for the existence of non-physical things, including Platonic forms, or dualistic realities with some kind of conscious substance.

    I have made a good will effort to find a definition of naturalism which will fit with the ontological beliefs of most naturalists while being maximally flexible (and thus maximally powerful). If you think your own or somebody else’s understand naturalism does not comport with that definition, I’d like very much to understand why not.

    You write: “ You then argue like this: I perceive meanings in life, moral truths, the naturalist's universe is absurd, and so on, *therefore* naturalism is false. But this is a complete non sequitur.

    Strictly speaking you are right. But being absurd is very close to what we mean by being false. That’s why most people accept arguments in the form of reductio ad absurdum. Any worldview in which we couldn’t really have acted differently than how we did, in which to torture a child for fun is not really wrong in itself, in which meaning is something one invents or projects onto reality, and so on, is absurd. Now perhaps the world *is* absurd; perhaps whatever we perceive beyond physical phenomena (e.g. moral truths, values, meaning, beauty, freedom, etc) is really an illusion. Perhaps. Still, “illusions here, illusions there, illusions everywhere” (or at least everywhere where naturalism doesn’t fit) does not make for a very good philosophy I think. And is moreover an unlivable philosophy, for if one tries to be self-consistent it leads directly to nihilism.

    [continued in the next post]

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  15. I think the epistemological problem is straightforward: It is clear that physical data underdetermine reality, for the simple reason that, as philosophers have long pointed out, there are many logically self-consistent realities which would produce exactly the same physical data in our disposal. For example and rather obviously the physical data are consistent with theism. (Surprisingly enough, scientific realists have trouble describing a reality that would be consistent with the physical data we have – see the debacle with the various interpretations of quantum data. There is here a huge argument against naturalism but one that is not exploited by theists, probably because most of them are scientific realists too. It seems this is the myth of our day and age which virtually everybody subscribes to: that science does not only model phenomena but also describes the underlying reality which produces them.) Anyway, my main point is that we perceive much more data than just physical data, and using them I think a strong case for a personal/spiritual understanding of reality emerges. So how do naturalists respond? But denying (i.e. calling illusory) all the data in our disposal that do not fit their preconceptions, while loudly affirming that beliefs should be based on evidence. Well, I say, beliefs should be based on *all* the evidence we have, and I don’t see why non-naturalists should do naturalists the favor of disallowing the use of evidence except in those cases where naturalists approve.

    At this juncture I often get the impression that many a naturalist gets confused by the following thought: All non-physical data (which are by definition invisible to the physical sciences) have a physical manifestation, or, if you will, a physical analogue, namely people thinking or speaking about their perception of non-physical data such as moral truths, meaning, beauty, freedom, etc. And, many naturalists claim, science will be one day capable of explaining exactly how come our brains produce these physical manifestations. Now, given the complexity of our brains I am not sure that this will turn out to be viable - but suppose it will be. Suppose, say, science will someday describe the complex physical process by which a brain produces the utterance “To torture a child for fun is wrong in itself”. So why should that discovery be relevant one way or the other? How would such a description help us find out whether the content of that utterance is true or not? Similarly, one would also be capable of describing exactly how come our brain produces physical utterances such as “1+1=2” or “the principle of induction is a reasonable one” or “astrological charts predict the future” or “my wife is the most beautiful woman in the world”. That one can describe exactly how come a physical system such as our brain produces a particular utterance says *nothing* about whether the content of the utterance is true or not (indeed says nothing about what that utterance actually means, for you cannot go from syntax to semantics or from mechanics to meaning, but let’s overlook this point). Therefore I think it is a fallacy to hold that the study of our brain may produce reasons for holding that such and such utterances are false or that one’s non-physical perceptions are illusory. I think here we have a generalized version of the so-called “naturalistic fallacy”. But then on what grounds may a naturalist hold that these perceptions are illusory, or not veridical, in the first place? It seems on none whatsoever, except of course by begging the question and assuming that they are illusory because they don’t fit with naturalism.

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  16. Hi, Dianelos-

    "For example and rather obviously the physical data are consistent with theism. (Surprisingly enough, scientific realists have trouble describing a reality that would be consistent with the physical data we have – see the debacle with the various interpretations of quantum data. ..."

    This is a funny way to engage in theoretical thinking. Apparently, any unexplained mystery is "consistent with theism". How about some positive evidence? Many mysteries have received explanations over historical time. How many of them have been (successfully) resolved in favor of theism? None have. All you've got are gaps into which to squish a dwindling image of god.

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  17. Hi Dianelos

    I agree with your central thesis here, that we are best to see science as providing a functional model of the world, rather than a description of the underlying reality. And further, the utility of this model relies upon leaps of faith with regard to, for example, induction. Naturalists of the kind you describe, if indeed they exist, are committing an error.

    As best I can see, however, theists commit precisely the same error if they move beyond 'here is a story I enjoy' to a claim that their particular brand of story reflects the greater underlying reality. Your argument, as you present it here, appears to provide a powerful defence for agnosticism.

    Bernard

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  18. Hi Bernard: I disagree with you about science AND theism:-). What I mean is, I think science DOES tells us about the underlying reality of the physical facts we observe. It's not an infallible guide, we could be wrong about nearly any of science's claims. But I do in fact believe it tells us underlying truths. I also believe that induction is a valid source of knowledge about this underlying reality. And I also believe in God, not just as a character in a story I like, but as a reality. And I would in the end agree that this belief of mine is a matter of faith.

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  19. Keith

    Well, by agreeing this is a matter of faith, you are, in one sense at least, acknowledging that it is just a story you like. A belief you choose to have for no other reason that it feels right to you to have it. And what has always puzzled me is the reluctance people show to own this stance. Believing convenient fictions is perfectly respectable behaviour, we all do it.

    Bernard

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  20. Hi Burk,

    You write: “ Apparently, any unexplained mystery is "consistent with theism".

    What mystery would that be? After all, on theism there is no mystery at all with God producing for us a deeply mathematically ordered, and also deeply elegant, experience of physical phenomena. If you see any mystery with that view I’d like to know where.

    On the other hand modern science has revealed how mysterious a naturalistic world would be: How come a mechanistic/purposeless reality should be so deeply mathematically ordered, never mind so elegant? How come a primitive particle, such as the electron without any moving parts or access to a computing machinery, manages to display such a computationally complex behavior? What kind of naturalistic reality produces the quantum phenomena we know so much about nowadays? How come that despite the huge amount of physical knowledge that modern science has provided to us there is no inkling whatsoever in it that a physical system of a particular structure would become conscious? Never mind the strange and persistent issue of the universe’s apparent fine-tuning. It seems that if naturalism is true then we have in our hands mysteries within mysteries.

    How about some positive evidence?

    Indeed, how about some positive evidence for naturalism? I have searched for it, and a well-known modern philosopher writing as recently as a few years back in a philosophical magazine only came up with the weakest of arguments for naturalism (basically: that we never observe non-embodied minds – the equivocation being that we never observe embodied minds either). Or at least what about some positive evidence that science not only mathematically models physical phenomena, but also describes the underlying reality?

    As far as I can see the current state of affairs is very close to the tale of the Naked Emperor. Everybody believes that there is lots of evidence for naturalism, that science greatly supports naturalism, that only a fool would doubt all of that – but when one actually looks there is nothing of the sort to be seen.

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  21. Hi Bernard: I do not think I did agree with you that theism is just a story I like. I think theism is true, because it "feels" true to me, it SEEMS to fit better with certain subjective experiences I have related to consciousness, conscience and such. When I say it's a matter of faith, what I mean is that I do not imagine I can objectively prove I am right, and I totally respect atheists who say that to them religion just SEEMS like a fairy tale.

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  22. Hi Burk: You raise the "God of the (ever decreasing) Gaps" objection to theism, but I don't see any gaps decreasing. Back in the day, people attributed lightning to God, today we theists STILL attribute lightning to God, we just have a more complete picture of what lightning IS. The gaps, if that's the best word, haven't closed at all.

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  23. Hi Keith

    I suppose the bit I get stuck on is that you both think theism is true, and think you might be wrong about this. This is a limited form of belief isn't it? A form of agnosticism even.

    Bernard

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  24. Hi Bernard: One of the other things I believe is that I am fallible. From this I conclude I could be wrong about anything (Left as a homework assignment is the question of whether my belief that I am fallible could ITSELF be wrong:-). There are some things I am more confident of than others. I am supremely confident that I ate a piece of angel food cake for breakfast (my wife is a great baker, and yes I know cake for breakfast is just wrong). I am supremely confident that I am conscious, and fairly confident that consciousness (as opposed to the kind of physical phenomenon we associate with consciousness) doesn't make sense on the assumption of materialistic naturalism. This kind of thing leads me to believe in God, plus when I reflect on the universe and my experiences in life I feel more and more convinced that God exists. To a lesser extent, I find myself believing that the picture of God we see in Christ fits best with my intuitions ABOUT God and life and love and such. But I could be wrong, and in the face of testimony from other people that THEIR intuitions differ from mine, I do not feel justified in telling them how wrong they obviously are:-) Maybe their is a tension in all this, but I don't really see that as a limited form of belief. Not so much a limit but rather a continuum of belief, I guess.

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  25. Hi Dianelos,

    As always you raise a number of interesting points. I can't comment them all but I will try to address some of them.

    First, there is the question of the evidence you claim exists for theism. Take the case of absolute moral values or facts (the AMF of a few weeks ago). The only evidence I have is that some claim to perceive their existence very clearly. I don't. In fact, the very idea seems quite absurd to me. Now, what are we to do with this? The fact here is that intuitions about this matter differ widely and until someone comes up with reliable means of choosing which one to trust, I have to conclude that this piece of evidence from intuition is worthless. What else? (To be sure, by AMF I mean a moral fact that would be true in the absence of any conscious life. I'm not saying that moral values are arbitrary for humans.)

    There is something else I find strange about using theism as an explanation for everything. It is all very well to say that theism is compatible with anything but what does it say really? Faced with a “mystery”, something to explain (be it the whole of reality, consciousness, whatever), it posits the existence of a powerful being that just made it so. How is this an explanation? It is no different from saying “well, we don't know why this is so, but let's assume we know and call it X”. But I don't see how that explains anything.

    Given this trick, of course theism is compatible with anything. So is the belief in an evil God, an all-powerful trickster. Or, for that matter, so is the brain in a vat idea. There is no shortage of possibilities. But explanations these are not.

    Of course, reality is full of mysteries. But, faced with them, why not simply say that we don't know? Some may prefer to project human attributes on these mysteries, making them easier to apprehend, perhaps. Nothing wrong with that, of course, as Bernard has pointed out many times.

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  26. Hi Keith

    Yes, I agree. A continuum is a good way of looking at it. We believe in things with varying degrees of confidence. The things I am most confident of (while understanding that in some not understood way I might still be quite wrong) are things where I don't grant others the right to see things their own way if they want to. Hence, if somebody teeters too near the edge of a precipice, and assures me if they fall they will simply float, I feel a moral responsibility to contradict them.

    Other things, I feel I am unable to contradict others. I see it one way, but my belief isn't strong enough to counter their entirely different perspective. I think of these beliefs as personal beliefs. They are, in the end, just stories I tell myself about the world, and being unsupported by shared standards of evidence and reasoning, I have to learn to live in a world where they can not be imposed beyond my own personal boundary.

    Your religious belief seems to fall into the second category. You believe it, but hold no warrant to contradict those who don't. Although words in the end may be unimportant, I like the use of the word agnostic here, as being literally without knowledge, and having only belief, seems the perfect description.

    I am interested in why consciousness doesn't make sense under a materialistic description. I fully endorse the view that we don't yet have a full physical explanation of consciousness, leaving open the possibility that the full explanation will include elements that go beyond our current physical models. But not yet fully explained and not making sense seem to be different things to me. What do you have in mind here?

    Bernard

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  27. Hi, Keith-

    "This kind of thing leads me to believe in God, plus when I reflect on the universe and my experiences in life I feel more and more convinced that God exists."

    That is great, but note just how far your evidence lets you go in your belief. Not very far. A vague sensation that god explains everything doesn't support scriptural stories, or effectual prayers, or any other explicit tenet of traditional religion. Without better connections/evidence between the former and the latter, all we have are the evident (and well-characterized) mechanisms of existence, underpinned by universally acknowledged mysteries. At wan religion at best.

    Let me also add particularly that the claim that consciousness doesn't make sense on naturalism is such a weak argument. It has nothing going for it other than well-indoctrinated intuition and well-evolved non-self-consciousness, while every shred of physical and scientific evidence goes in the other direction. It is all in our heads, so to speak. I was just reading an article on neuroscience, and without a blush or demur, they state:

    "But no matter how accomplished, a single neuron can never perceive beauty, feel sadness, or solve a mathematical problem. These capabilities emerge only when networks of neurons work together. Ensembles of brain cells, often quite far-flung, form integrated neural circuits, and the activity of the network as a whole supports specific brain functions such as perception, cognition, or emotions."

    This is the program of the field, and no one in it would give a minute's thought to the whacky ideas of souls, supernatural thinkers, feelers, consciousness-providers, etc. The evidence for that just isn't there. This is one case where some precincts of philosophy, and certainly theology & popular theology, are totally out of touch with reality, and are falling further behind by the minute.

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  28. HI Bernard: Let me try to explain where I come from wrt to consciousness and materialism. I'll start from the most basic thing: one particle of matter interacting with another. Back in Newtonian days the interaction was seen as totally determined by the mass and velocity of each particle as the "obeyed" Newton's laws. Nowadays we add in a certain amount of Quantum indeterminacy, but that detail aside, the behavior of each particle is a mechanical process. Now add more particles to the mix, the interactions are more complicated but STILL they are just particles moving around according to the laws of physics. I can easily imagine that through natural selections, certain patterns of particle behavior could be self-reinforcing--what I mean is that certain patterns would result on other particles becoming similarly organized, certain patterns dying out, the laws of genetics being what they are and all. So you, Bernard Beckett, consider a particular pattern of particles, one that looks and behaves like me. Yuu ask me questions, which in physical form are soundwaves that hot my ear drums and produce a signal that goes to my brain, that causes the particles in my brain to behave in certain ways which causes my mouth to produce another sound wave which you hear as an answer to your question. The point is, you needn't assume that I actually experience any kind of anything during this process. Under materialism every bit of that series of events is explainable by unconscious particles behaving according to the laws of physics.

    What's more, it seems to me that on materialism there's no reason TO assume that those collections of particles would be conscious. Since their behavior is causally unrelated to consciousness, if they can be conscious then ANY collection of particles seem equally likely to be conscious; rocks, flowers, ham sandwiches, whatever. Since I reject such silliness, I find myself rejecting materialism as well.

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  29. Hi, Keith-

    If I could help out here ... "What's more, it seems to me that on materialism there's no reason TO assume that those collections of particles would be conscious. " ... so suppose we replace your brain with jello.. would that work as well? If your mind is non-physical, then what is your brain doing?

    "Since their behavior is causally unrelated to consciousness, if they can be conscious then ANY collection of particles seem equally likely to be conscious; rocks, flowers, ham sandwiches, whatever."

    Huh?- this fails to make sense. The theory and evidence is that the particular structure of brains generates consciousness- smaller in primitive organisms, larger in higher organisms. There is no shortage of conscious/sentient/responsive beings around us. But no arbitrary set of molecules/rocks are conscious, because consciousness is not a property of matter per se, but of special biological (or eventually electrical, perhaps) arrangements of matter.

    I realize that we have a fundamental (and necessary) blindness to the foundation of our own consciousness, and indeed don't understand its operations even theoretically yet. But that shouldn't blind us to the basic evidence available, which is that manipulations of the brain affect consciousness, and events of consciousness are traceable in the brain in increasing detail. That is the only mind-external relationship that is known.

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  30. Hi Keith

    I have often seen the case you put here made, but fail to make proper sense of it. A materialist explanation of consciousness may hold for example that consciousness is necessary product of a certain type of complex physical arrangement. Under this hypothesis, the claim that my speech, affecting your ear drum, sending a signal to your brain which mechanically produces a response via your speech, can happen unconsciously, becomes incorrect. The argument goes, if a certain type of physical process occurs, then consciousness occurs, because consciousness just is that physical process (or by some formulations,is a necessary byproduct of such processes).

    Now, that might turn out not to be true. But your argument leading to the absurdity of conscious rocks must assume in advance that it is not true, in order to work. And so the case reduces to 'if consciousness is not just a physical process, then consciousness can't be just a physical process' and you'll understand why this case leaves me a little cold.

    As we grow to better understand the correlation between physical brain states, and the various sensations we tend to refer to as consciousness, we get better at deciding this issue. To decide in advance is at best incurious, I think.

    Bernard

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  31. Keith

    If you assume, as you seem to, that there is no causal relationship between physical organisation and consciousness, then it is neither difficult nor impressive to conclude as a result that, well, there is no relationship.

    Materialist agnostics like me assume there might be a necessary relationship, and so are interested in further exploring the workings of the brain. There is no silliness here that I an see.

    Bernard

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  32. Hi Keith,

    Let me add my bit to the consciousness issue. Granted, this question is unresolved – I am not saying science has solved it, by any means. But there is a lot of work going on in this field and, from what I can see, steady progress. Under these conditions, it is certainly premature to conclude that the whole enterprise will fail...

    You seem to argue that because there is no hint of consciousness at the atomic level (say), consciousness cannot be explained in physical terms. But wouldn't the same argument apply to all emergent properties of physical systems? Life itself is a popular example (think bacterial life, or insects, if you want to keep consciousness out of the picture). There is certainly no hint of life at the atomic level and there was certainly a time when we thought (very reasonably) that Life was some special “essence” that needed to be added to matter somehow, to make it go (some élan vital). But we now know it's not the case; chemistry alone explains life pretty well.

    To assume that consciousness is a “thing” and not an emergent property might be making the same mistake. Isn't it better to wait and see? History is full of impossibility proofs that turned out to be mistaken (but seemed airtight at the time). Think of Kelvin's (I think it was) proof that the Earth couldn't be more than a few tens (or hundreds) million years old because it couldn't remain hot longer than that. It made complete sense. But then, radioactivity was discovered and made his argument invalid. We should not assume that we won't be surprised again.

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  33. Hi JP: I think the whole emergent property notion is problematic. What does it mean to say life is an emergent property? What IS life? It seems to me that on the assumption of materialism, life is just a label we apply to certain kinds of particle motion, atoms moving according to the laws of physics. The property of "moving" already existed before life evolved, all that happened when life evolved is those atoms became organized to move in a different way than previously, in a way that tended to produce similar motions from similar collections of atoms.

    But consciousness is conceptually different from particle motion. This is clear because we can imagine the concept of a zombie, whose brain/body acts just like a real person but who is not actually aware of anything. If consciousness was the same CONCEPT as brain activity the idea of a zombie would be a logical contradiction.

    But leaving aside the problems I have with emergent properties, I would wonder how one could ever SHOW it to be. Neuroscience doesn't seem to be to be capable of addressing the issue, since all science can observe is the physical behaviors we associate with consciousness. The only consciousness we can observe is our own, otherwise all we see is behaviors. How does neuroscience even get a foothold?

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  34. Hi Bernard: I took it to be a given of materialism that all the behavior of material things could be accounted for by matter following the laws of physics. if so then there would seem to be no reason a complex enough collection of atoms could behave the way a person does and yet this collection not be conscious at all, a zombie as it were. The idea of a zombie doesn't seem contradictory or anything, so how would science even possibly show that consciousness actually does emerges from the way matter os organized? The question seems to be a metaphysical one, that IF matter gives rise to mind, it is by some process that cannot be scientifically observed, and one that seems to me to be beyond materialism.

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  35. Hi, Keith-

    You have some good questions. I would say that emergence is, once again, something that describes our own mental landscape more than it accounts for anything in the real world. Emergence says that something is so complex that it is difficult or impossible to predict its properties from the constituent principles. But that is our problem, not that of reality. If we assiduously apply reductionistic analysis, we can retrospectively explain what we are interested in (aside from historical contingencies which may be lost).

    So, skyscrapers are emergent properties of steel, concrete, and human imagination. Life is an emergent property of carbon and other elements under favorable conditions. We have trouble predicting such enormous complexity from chemistry, (or even at the moment explaining it fully retrospectively/historically), but when one analyzes life, it consists of nothing but chemicals. That's it.

    The zombie argument is, with all due respect, not a working argument. "If so then there would seem to be no reason a complex enough collection of atoms could behave the way a person does and yet this collection not be conscious at all, a zombie as it were."

    Let me assert the opposite.. that a complex enough collection of atoms resembling a human and its brain has to be conscious. That was simple! As Bernard has mentioned, the fact that we spontaneously come awake every morning, and from anesthesia, is a substantial argument for the structure of the brain innately and necessarily causing consciousness. That is how it works, based on its structure.

    Asserting the opposite fails to meet the evidence, in view of the interventions required to cause commensurate alterations of consciousness, from alcohol to LSD to ether, blunt force, etc. It takes a lot of physical intervention to abrogate consciousness- it has not been possible to do without physical intervention, which one would not expect if zombies were such a plausible phenomenon. Syndromes such as epilepsy and sleep develop from within the brain, but could hardly be termed non-physical... they are internal programs, whether pathological or not, that have clear physical causes and traces.

    "The question seems to be a metaphysical one, that IF matter gives rise to mind, it is by some process that cannot be scientifically observed, and one that seems to me to be beyond materialism."

    Suppose that in twenty years scientists have a working consensus model of how consciousness works, and in thirty years this has been reproduced in silicon, as the singularity contention has it. What then of these metaphysics? We shall see.

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  36. Hi Bernard,

    You write: “[Worldviews] are, in the end, just stories I tell myself about the world, and being unsupported by shared standards of evidence and reasoning [snip]

    By “shared standards of evidence” I assume you mean physical phenomena, which is the only evidence which naturalists accept. The fact of the matter though is that we have much more data to our disposal than physical data, and to ignore them amounts to an obvious and gross epistemic error. It is not clear to me on what grounds naturalists justify their rejection of non-physical data, but I have the impression they have two reasons:

    One reason is that only physical data are such that everybody agrees about them. This reason is wrong on two accounts: First there are clearly many kinds of non-physical data everybody (everybody with normal cognitive faculties that is) agrees with. One important case in point are some ethical data. Sam Harris in his book “The Moral Landscape” insists on this point, and well-known philosopher Thomas Nagel, while commenting on that book, agrees. Here’s how Nagel puts it: “Harris has identified a real problem, rooted in the idea that facts are objective and values are subjective. Harris rejects this facile opposition in the only way it can be rejected—by pointing to evaluative truths so obvious that they need no defense. For example, a world in which everyone was maximally miserable would be worse than a world in which everyone was happy, and it would be wrong to try to move us toward the first world and away from the second. This is not true by definition, but it is obvious, just as it is obvious that elephants are larger than mice. If someone denied the truth of either of those propositions, we would have no reason to take him seriously…” Secondly, even if it were the case that people only agree on the physical data, it does not at all follow that one shouldn’t therefore take into account data one has and others don’t. Suppose I am a mystic who experiences God with a clarity and immediacy that strikes me as more real than physical reality. Very few people around me will agree with that data of mine, for the simple reason that they don’t have that experience. But this does not for an instant suggests that therefore I should not take into account that data. (Not to mention very few people around me share the experience I have of my wife either.)

    The second reason is that taking into account non-physical data often leads into error. But taking into account only physical data often leads into error also (as the history of the physical sciences overwhelmingly demonstrates), so that second reason is vacuous too. One may fall in error when thinking about any data; but what is always an error is not to take into account all data one has.

    Closing one’s eyes to evidence is simply unwise. One should take into account all of one’s experience of life and see how best to make sense of it. And when I take all of my experience of life into account then theism makes excellent sense, and naturalism no sense at all. Thanks to the physical sciences we now know that naturalism does not make much sense even if one takes only physical data into account, hence naturalists proposing increasingly complex and implausible descriptions of reality (multiverses within multivereses etc).

    Finally I’d like to object to the expression that worldviews are “just stories we tell ourselves about the world”, not so much because it is wrong but because it is misleading. After all and strictly speaking, physics too just says a story about physical phenomena. The point is that unlike “just stories” physics is not arbitrary but can be tested. As can ontological worldviews. Not all worldviews work equally well; not conceptually, and not experientially. I think Eric would agree with this. When he says that reasonable people can be theists and reasonable people can be naturalists, he is simply pointing out an obvious fact. But it does not follow and I don’t think he means that both worldviews are equally reasonable.

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  37. Hi Bernard,

    You write: “[Worldviews] are, in the end, just stories I tell myself about the world, and being unsupported by shared standards of evidence and reasoning [snip]

    By “shared standards of evidence” I assume you mean physical phenomena, which is the only evidence which naturalists accept. The fact of the matter though is that we have much more data to our disposal than physical data, and to ignore them amounts to an obvious and gross epistemic error. It is not clear to me on what grounds naturalists justify their rejection of non-physical data, but I have the impression they have two reasons:

    One reason is that only physical data are such that everybody agrees about them. This reason is wrong on two accounts: First there are clearly many kinds of non-physical data everybody (everybody with normal cognitive faculties that is) agrees with. One important case in point are some ethical data. Sam Harris in his book “The Moral Landscape” insists on this point, and well-known philosopher Thomas Nagel, while commenting on that book, agrees. Here’s how Nagel puts it: “Harris has identified a real problem, rooted in the idea that facts are objective and values are subjective. Harris rejects this facile opposition in the only way it can be rejected—by pointing to evaluative truths so obvious that they need no defense. For example, a world in which everyone was maximally miserable would be worse than a world in which everyone was happy, and it would be wrong to try to move us toward the first world and away from the second. This is not true by definition, but it is obvious, just as it is obvious that elephants are larger than mice. If someone denied the truth of either of those propositions, we would have no reason to take him seriously…” Secondly, even if it were the case that people only agree on the physical data, it does not at all follow that one shouldn’t therefore take into account data one has and others don’t. Suppose I am a mystic who experiences God with a clarity and immediacy that strikes me as more real than physical reality. Very few people around me will agree with these data of mine, for the simple reason that they don’t have that experience. But this does not for an instant suggests that therefore I should not take into account these data. (Not to mention very few people around me share the experience I have of my wife either.)

    [continued in the next post]

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  38. [continued from above]

    The second reason is that taking into account non-physical data often leads into error. But taking into account only physical data often leads into error also (as the history of the physical sciences overwhelmingly demonstrates), so that second reason is vacuous too. One may fall in error when thinking about any data; but what is always an error is not to take into account all data one has.

    I think that closing one’s eyes to evidence is simply unwise. One should take into account all of one’s experience of life and see how best to make sense of it. And when I take all of my experience of life into account then theism makes excellent sense, and naturalism no sense at all. Thanks to the physical sciences we now know that naturalism does not make much sense even if one takes only physical data into account, hence naturalists proposing increasingly complex and implausible descriptions of reality (multiverses within multivereses etc).

    Finally I’d like to object to the expression that worldviews are “just stories we tell ourselves about the world”, not so much because it is wrong but because it is misleading. After all and strictly speaking, physics too just says a story about physical phenomena. The point is that unlike “just stories” physics is not arbitrary but can be tested. As can ontological worldviews. Not all worldviews work equally well; not conceptually, and not experientially. I think Eric would agree with this. When he says that reasonable people can be theists and reasonable people can be naturalists, he is simply pointing out an obvious fact. But it does not follow and I don’t think he means that both worldviews are equally reasonable.

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  39. Hi Keith,

    Lots of interesting stuff here.

    The zombie idea I find unconvincing. You say you can imagine such a thing but what does that mean? We can imagine a being identical to a human but three times larger, happily roaming the earth just like we do... Fine but such a thing would crumble under its own weight, its bones too fragile to support it (for simple physical reasons). So, many things we can easily imagine are physically impossible.

    Might be that if we assemble molecules just the way they are in a human, the result will be, by necessity, conscious. To imagine the opposite may simply mean we put the idea of consciousness as a separate “thing” in our imagining, thus begging the question.

    I mentioned life and Kelvin's error as examples of past “impossibilities” that turned out to be not so. And, when you ask what life is, well it's what we define it to be: we call certain things alive, others not and still others, well we're not too sure what to make of them But the problem is not with identifying what Life as a thing is, but in the fact that reality does not fit into our simple categories. Consciousness may turn out to be similar.

    So, what to make of it? On one hand, we have no end of evidence linking consciousness to brain activity. On the other, well, some arguments attempting to prove it can't be physical. All I'm saying is that our past shows how often we've been misled by logical (or other) impossibility arguments. Reality has a way of proving us wrong.

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  40. (I am having trouble posting again)

    [continued from above]

    The second reason is that taking into account non-physical data often leads into error. But taking into account only physical data often leads into error also (as the history of the physical sciences overwhelmingly demonstrates), so that second reason is vacuous too. One may fall in error when thinking about any data; but what is always an error is not to take into account all data one has.

    I think that closing one’s eyes to evidence is simply unwise. One should take into account all of one’s experience of life and see how best to make sense of it. And when I take all of my experience of life into account then theism makes excellent sense, and naturalism no sense at all. Thanks to the physical sciences we now know that naturalism does not make much sense even if one takes only physical data into account, hence naturalists proposing increasingly complex and implausible descriptions of reality (multiverses within multivereses etc).

    Finally I’d like to object to the expression that worldviews are “just stories we tell ourselves about the world”, not so much because it is wrong but because it is misleading. After all and strictly speaking, physics too just says a story about physical phenomena. The point is that unlike “just stories” physics is not arbitrary but can be tested. As can ontological worldviews. Not all worldviews work equally well; not conceptually, and not experientially. I think Eric would agree with this. When he says that reasonable people can be theists and reasonable people can be naturalists, he is simply pointing out an obvious fact. But it does not follow and I don’t think he means that both worldviews are equally reasonable.

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  41. Hi Burk,

    You write: “If your mind is non-physical, then what is your brain doing?

    On dualism, which is the traditional theistic understanding, one’s non-physical mind uses then brain in order to think (or, in general, to experience). The idea is that in our current condition we need our brain, indeed we need the physical universe, in order to function.

    The theory and evidence is that the particular structure of brains generates consciousness- smaller in primitive organisms, larger in higher organisms.

    I don’t think naturalists can provide any such evidence. If they could then they would know for a fact which physical systems are conscious and which aren’t. But actually they don’t. They don’t in fact know whether primitive organisms such as cockroaches are at all conscious or not. Similarly we don’t know whether, say, computers, are conscious or not. Some naturalists believe that thermostats are conscious; others, for example popular philosopher and New Atheist Daniel Dennett, believe that animals and pre-linguistic children are not conscious.

    But that shouldn't blind us to the basic evidence available, which is that manipulations of the brain affect consciousness, and events of consciousness are traceable in the brain in increasing detail.

    I think you are here committing the so-called fallacy of affirming the consequent. It is true that *if* our brain produces our consciousness then manipulations of our brain will affect our consciousness. But the fact that manipulations of our brain do affect our consciousness is *not* evidence for the belief that our brain produces our consciousness.

    Let me restate the above. There is evidence E for belief B if and only if E and B are compatible and E and not-B are not compatible. If E is compatible both with B and with not-B then E is not evidence for B, simply because not-B may be the case. That manipulations of the brain affect our consciousness is compatible both with the view that our brain produces our consciousness and with the view that our brain does not produces our consciousness (but is used by it – the dualistic view).

    Let me restate the above once more. Observe that manipulations of our physical environment also affect our consciousness. For example, switching off the lights in a room affects our sight. But that's not evidence that the light bulbs play a role in producing our consciousness.

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  42. Bernard,

    Above you write of “materialist agnostics”. What do you mean by that? For, as far as I understand the respective concepts, one can be either a materialist or an agnostic, but not both at the same time.

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  43. Burk,

    I agree with your discussion of emergent properties (or rather “strong emergent properties”, i.e. the idea that some properties of complex systems are not reducible to the properties of their constituent parts). Nobody has yet demonstrated any such strong emergent property. But then, to suggest that consciousness is a strong emergent property of the brain amounts to a case of special pleading.

    You write: “Let me assert the opposite.. that a complex enough collection of atoms resembling a human and its brain has to be conscious.

    I am not sure I see what your argument is. I can also assert that a collection of atoms resembling a thermostat has to be conscious. So what?

    On the contrary Keith’s argument (based on David Chalmers’s “zombie” argument) strikes me a crystal clear: According to what science teaches us a physical system such as the brain would behave exactly as it does no matter whether it produces consciousness or not. If science only studies the physical data related to the brain, and as these physical data are identical whether the brain produces consciousness or not, how can science possibly detect whether the brain produces consciousness or not – never mind explain how it does it? This is a simple question I'd like to have an answer to.

    As Bernard has mentioned, the fact that we spontaneously come awake every morning, and from anesthesia, is a substantial argument for the structure of the brain innately and necessarily causing consciousness.

    Can you explain where that substantial argument is? For, frankly, I see none whatsoever.

    [continued in the next post]

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  44. [continued from above]

    It takes a lot of physical intervention to abrogate consciousness- it has not been possible to do without physical intervention, which one would not expect if zombies were such a plausible phenomenon.

    You are equivocating two senses of the world “unconscious”. If you use the same physical intervention on a zombie, it too would stop behaving in a way you associate with consciousness. Hit a zombie on the head strongly enough, and the zombie will fall down unconscious.

    Suppose that in twenty years scientists have a working consensus model of how consciousness works,[snip]

    I think that’s a pipe dream. Again: If science only studies the physical data related to the brain, and as these physical data are identical whether the brain produces consciousness or not, how can science possibly detect whether the brain produces consciousness or not – never mind explain how it does it?

    We shall see.

    Meantime, the clock is ticking. After many decades of research and hundreds of papers published, for now what we have is naturalists disagreeing about whether there is a hard problem of consciousness in the first place or not, and if there is about whether it is scientifically tractable or not, and about whether thermostats and pre-linguistic children are conscious beings or not.

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  45. Hi, Dianelos-

    "That manipulations of the brain affect our consciousness is compatible both with the view that our brain produces our consciousness and with the view that our brain does not produces our consciousness (but is used by it – the dualistic view). "

    I appreciate your logic, but I was not claiming proof. I was citing the available evidence, which unfortunately does not yet amount to proof. So we have to make a weight-of-the-evidence argument instead. And that weight comes down extremely strongly on the physical basis of minds. There are countless physical interventions and manipulations that affect minds.

    On the other hand, there is no positive evidence for the dualist postion- it exists purely as a formal loophole to the face of diminishing uncertainty. Are there ESP phenomena? No. Are there ways to affect minds without going through brains? No. Are there any other supernatural phenomena to take seriously? No. Intuition is not evidence. It is understandable as a feeling, and requires explanation as does everything else, but it fails to tell us anything positive, especially on topics so very far afield from its (social) purpose & expertise.

    So, I am happy to wait the few years or decades it will take to nail this down more completely. All I am saying is that out in the real world, where scientists are grappling with the actual details of how minds and brains relate, all bets go in one direction, with rich rewards in these lines of research. So I find this discussion remarkably unhinged from reality.


    "According to what science teaches us a physical system such as the brain would behave exactly as it does no matter whether it produces consciousness or not."

    This is simply false. Science teaches us that information always has a physical instantiation. So our mental lives, rich as they are in information, necessarily have a physical instantiation as well, which is the dynamic activities of our brains. Thus also, any structure that is identical with a conscious brain will have consciousness- you simply don't have the choice that you, Chalmers, and Keith give yourselves. Structure is ineluctably linked to function. You are imagining that "mind" is disembodied, without any evidence or theoretical justification. You are simply asserting what it is you claim to prove/advocate.

    As for the hard problem, it is a matter of subjectivity and inside/outside perspective, which the Turing test, among other procedures, tries to address. I wouldn't say that the Turing test is gold-plated, but at some point, we will just have to accept that a being that behaves in a dynamically responsive and thoughtful way, as we and animals do, is presumptively conscious. The Jeopardy computer was not, nor the chess computer, but they supply small pieces of the full puzzle, and AI is getting there, slowly.

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  46. Hi Burk:

    I guess I don 't agree the evidence DOES come down on a physicalist view of consciousness. Dianelos made the point that I'd like to reiterate:

    If some set of evidence E is as compatible with one theory as it is with another, then E doesn't count as evidence for one over the other. The evidence is quite clear that brain states affect a person's reported experience of consciousness, but this is no less compatible with dualism than it is with physicalism. And in fact I have trouble imagining what kind of scientific facts WOULD be more compatible with physicalism than dualism. As far as I can tell, whether physicalism or dualism is a metaphysical question, not one science can even address. This is an important (and bold perhaps:-) claim I am making. I echo Dianelos when I say that since all science can do is observe a correlation between brain states and reports of conscious experiences, any possible evidence would be consistent with an immaterial mind USING a brain as an organ for thinking. Since all possible evidence is equally consistent with both theories, it isn't evidence for either one.

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  47. Hi Keith

    I can't make the zombie argument work, but feel free to explain my error. the only way it becomes compelling, is if I assume in advance that consciousness is something other than a certain type of organised complexity. At this point it is possible to imagine a zombie, that has the organised complexity, but not the consciousness. But, f I assume as a starting point that consciousness is a necessary quality of this type of organisation, then a zombie becomes impossible to imagine (loosely speaking, like imagining a circle that isn't round).

    So the whole point becomes, what is our assumed starting point. My argument is that, until we have a better working understanding of the way brain function produces consciousness (or at the very least, its correlation between physical brain states and conscious states) we have no grounds for either assumption, and so the zombie argument is question begging.

    Bernard

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  48. Hi Keith

    I can't make the zombie argument work, but feel free to explain my error. the only way it becomes compelling, is if I assume in advance that consciousness is something other than a certain type of organised complexity. At this point it is possible to imagine a zombie, that has the organised complexity, but not the consciousness. But, f I assume as a starting point that consciousness is a necessary quality of this type of organisation, then a zombie becomes impossible to imagine (loosely speaking, like imagining a circle that isn't round).

    So the whole point becomes, what is our assumed starting point. My argument is that, until we have a better working understanding of the way brain function produces consciousness (or at the very least, its correlation between physical brain states and conscious states) we have no grounds for either assumption, and so the zombie argument is question begging.

    Bernard

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  49. Sorry for the repeated posts. It now turns out that blogger can take quite a bit of time before publishing a post – so I wrongly assumed it had failed to post it, as has been the case so often in the past.

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  50. I’d like to comment on this bit that JP writes: “Might be that if we assemble molecules just the way they are in a human, the result will be, by necessity, conscious.

    This might well be true in our universe having our kind of matter. Indeed I happen to believe that it is true. Chalmers’s zombie argument speaks of a different universe than ours, having slightly different kind of molecules in this sense: Even though the molecules in that universe are identical to the molecules in our universe in *all* their physical properties science can measure, when in that universe we assemble molecules just the way they are in a human the result will be, by necessity, *not* a conscious being. So here’s the problem that Chalmers asks us to confront (or at least the way I see his argument):

    The two universes are by definition identical in all their physical properties. So there is in that universe a planet identical to Earth, down to the position of each molecule. The significant difference being that in our universe human-structured assemblies of molecules are conscious beings, whereas in that universe human-structured assemblies of its slightly different kind of molecules are not conscious beings. In that universe everybody then is a zombie, including the Daniel Dennett of that universe who wrote an identical “Consciousness Explained” in 1992. Naturalists in that universe use identical arguments about why consciousness is produced by their brains, based on the same physical evidence and using the same naturalistic epistemic principles. But all these arguments are wrong, for in that universe there is no consciousness whatsoever. Therefore all these arguments include some error. The problem now is this: Why isn’t the same error present in the identical arguments present in our universe? It seems we here have a proof that these naturalistic arguments in our universe must have an error, namely the same error they have in the zombie universe.

    Now, let’s turn the table and consider a theistic argument to the effect that people in our universe are conscious beings. The zombie theists in the zombie universe would use exactly the same argument, which in that universe would be wrong, and therefore contain an error. By the same logic I used above, why isn’t the same error present in the identical theistic arguments in our universe? The reason is that theistic arguments use not only physical data, but also non-physical data, i.e. subjective experiences. Subjective experiences do not exist in the zombie universe, and therefore theistic arguments in the zombie universe are built on false premises, whereas in our universe the same premises are true.

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  51. Hi Dianelos,

    The Zombie argument is basically this, then: there is a possible world that is identical to ours except for the absence of consciousness. To argue that this is possible, one must assume that consciousness can be separated from any physical substrate – otherwise the argument won't work, whatever the world (or provide another argument to that effect). But this is precisely what the whole argument is supposed to prove. It can hardly get more circular than that. What am I missing?

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  52. Hi bernard: About the zombie argument, I'm not exactly sure what you see as the purpose of the argument. My purpose is only to show that the materialist model(which I take to mean that all behavior in the universe is the result of matter following the laws of physics) doesn't need any entities to be actually experiencing anything. Since each of us knows that WE are experiencing things, then there must be something BEYOND that kind of materialism. That's all this shows, although the idea that there is a reality that transcends the merely material pushes me in the general direction of theism, but I don't intend to argue for that point right now.

    But I'm not sure I understand your view here. I agree that if we define "consciousness" as those kinds of complex brain behaviors we associate with consciousness, then philosophical zombies would be logically contradictory. But I am defining consciousness as "awareness" and I take it for granted that each of us has the experience of being aware, and the idea of a zombie SEEMING conscious but not actually being aware seems to be easily imaginable. If so then the CONCEPT of consciousness is different from the CONCEPT of complex brain behaviors, and since all science can do is observe the behaviors, I can't imagine any conceivable evidence that would show consciousness to be PRODUCED by the brain. As far as i can see it's not about how far advanced science can be, it's that science canot even get a foothold.

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  53. Hi JP:

    I agree that the zombie argument presupposes that it is possible for something to behave as if it's conscious but actually not be experiencing anything at all. But how is that not obviously POSSIBLE? The materialist model of reality doesn't need the hypothesis of awareness, all you need is matter/energy and the laws of physics to account for every behavior. The zombie argument doesn't try to prove there actually are disembodied consciousnesses, all it does is try to show that there is more to reality than the materialist model indicates.

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  54. Hi Keith

    Put simply, I think the materialist model does need awareness in it, because awareness and a particular type of complexity might be exactly the same thing. You begin by assuming this is not so, and from this assumptions all your conclusions naturally follow. I don't make this assumption. It's just one of these instinctive leaps, and as such loses its logical power. It becomes, as JP notes, circular.

    Bernard

    Bernard

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  55. Hi Bernard: I think we may be arguing semantics here. I'd say the materialist MODEL definitely doesn't have consciousness in it since all movement of all the matter in the universe is explanable without referring to consciousness. On the other hand, It could still be the case that conscious awareness exists if and only if there is matter moving in those kinds of patterns we've been talking about. That seems weird to me, and I do not see how science could even address the issue, but the zombie argument doesn't refute that possibility.

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  56. Hi Keith,

    I agree that it is possible for something to behave as if it's conscious but actually not be experiencing anything at all. The question is “which something”? The zombie argument claims that a being physically undistinguishable from a normal, conscious, human being could be itself unconscious. In this respect, as stated, the argument is begging the question. This does not exclude that, for example, some kind of robot might appear conscious without being so.

    Now, you say that the materialist model does not have consciousness in it. Well, it does not have chocolate cake either. The question is not whether consciousness is necessary to explain the universe but the opposite: can we explain consciousness on physical terms. Here, I think a fair assessment is that we don't know yet, although opinions may vary as to the probable outcome of the current research, of course.

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  57. Hi Keith

    I'm not sure that the statement 'the materialist model doesn't have consciousness in it' as you now clarify it, leads naturally to the point you wish to make, that there's something missing in the materialist model of mind hypothesis (beyond the detail, clearly, we're a long way off). JP's point regarding chocolate cake (or water, or atoms, or people, or anything really) seems pertinent. I may be misinterpreting you here. Perhaps you can clarify.

    Bernard

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  58. Hi JP:

    Forgive me if I am objection your question unfairly, but you seem to be conceding the possibility of a robot (an entity composed on microchips and metal and plastic) that acts conscious but isn't aware, but balking at the possibility of a "robot" composed of the exact same thing as a human that acts conscious but isn't aware. If so, then what is so special about carbon that makes this difference?

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  59. Hi Bernard: I'm been trying to put my finger on your objection, I think this may be it. Let's let materialism be the view that everything that exists can be reduced to (or explained by, or is caused by or I'm not sure the most accurate phrase here) matter moving according to the laws of physics. But conscious awareness is something that exists, therefore on materialism conscious awareness [insert the bold typed phrase]. If that's more or less materialism then I'd say materialism DOES have consciousness in it, even if we cannot yet see how the movement of matter actually leads to consciousness.

    So I guess all I can say is that when I don't see any conceivable way TO observe how matter movement can lead to consciousness. I can see how it would lead to the behaviors associated with consciousness, but not how it would lead to beings who are aware of things, and I can't think of any possible experiment that could yield such information. It seems like a pure metaphysical question. And again, this is also personal to me, when I think about atoms and such being the only real reality, it seems flat out implausible to me that out of complicated motions awareness would emerge. It seems to me that the world I experience is much more than just physical.

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  60. Hi Keith,

    If you assume that consciousness is some kind of optional add-in you can superimpose on a human, I suppose you can come up with a zombie, the same way you can get a bald head by shaving off hair. But this is a very strong assumption, as evidenced (among other things) by the immensely intricate manner in which consciousness is involved in brain function.

    My point is simply that if we could build something absolutely identical to a human in all its parts and let it go, well, we would get... a human, with all its attributes, including consciousness,

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  61. Hi JP: You wrote:
    My point is simply that if we could build something absolutely identical to a human in all its parts and let it go, well, we would get... a human, with all its attributes, including consciousness,

    This might be another example of differing intuitions, but I don't see this as what one would expect if reality were reducible to matter in motion. It seems obviously CONCEIVIBLE to me that a sufficiently complex arrangement of atoms could SEEM conscious, could respond to things exactly the way a sentient human being responds, and yet fail to be conscious. Your analogy of the bald head is a good one, but I think I can use it for my position too. Because hair on a head IS optional. Of course I can see clearly how hair could form on a bald head, but I do not see how matter could become aware just by being organized in a certain way. And more to the point, I don't see how science could even get a foothold on the question. That there is a correlation between brain states and reports of conscious experiences doesn't show consciousness to BE the product of the brain as opposed to the consciousness being a soul that uses the brain to process experiences. The evidence gives us no way to decide between the two, as far as I can see.

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  62. Hi JP,

    You write: “The Zombie argument is basically this, then: there is a possible world that is identical to ours except for the absence of consciousness. To argue that this is possible, one must assume that consciousness can be separated from any physical substrate

    One must assume that it is possible for a world to exist with a *different* kind of physical elements than ours, behaving as ours do under any experiment that produces visible results, but which when arranged in a human-like structure do not produce consciousness. Something is impossible only when it entails a contradiction, as for example is the case with a married bachelor, the greatest prime, or a four-sided triangle. But what contradiction could there be in a zombie-brain consisting of zombie-molecules which do not produce consciousness? Unless one can suggest at least some reason why such a zombie-brain is impossible, then it is unreasonable to object to the assumption that such a zombie-brain is possible.

    Why unreasonable? Because there is a clear epistemic asymmetry between assuming something is possible and assuming that something is impossible, the first always being the default position unless one has a defeater. Observe that to suggest that something may be impossible without giving any reasons leads to absurdities. Consider the following two cases:

    Two detectives work in a murder case with various suspects. The first detective suddenly suggests that they should not assume that it is possible that the butler is the murderer. The second detective is surprised and asks why not. The first detective answers that he doesn’t have any particular reason why not, but he still thinks that they should not assume that it is possible that the butler is the murderer.

    In Brecht’s Galileo Galilei there is a scene where Galileo invites a priest who objects to his heliocentric model to watch through the telescope and see the moons of Jupiter. The priest responds that he need not do that, because it is not possible that Jupiter has moons orbiting it. (I am making up the bit that follows:) Galileo insists, so the priest looks through the telescope and sees Jupiter’s moons. Then the priest uses the following gambit: Obviously, Galileo, you assume that it is possible that Jupiter has moons orbiting it. But why assume that? Perhaps it is impossible, in which case what we see through the telescope is some kind of optical illusion. To make your case you must first prove that it is possible for Jupiter to have moons, and this you haven’t demonstrated to my satisfaction.

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  63. Hello Dianelos

    We've been through this before, but this is a fascinating topic for me so I hope you'll permit my intrusion here.

    You are right, I think, that the assumption of possibility is central to the zombie case. My, possibly naive, reaction is this. If it turns out that consciousness just is a particular organisation of physical matter (or more likely a range of such organisations) then the zombie model does indeed contain a contradiction.

    I've used the analogy before I know, but consider a circle defined in a particular geometric space such that the locus of points equidistant from the centre inevitably yield certain qualities, like curvature, or the ratio between the circumference and the diameter. If the relationship between equidistance and curvature is analogous to the relationship between a certain type of physical organisation and consciousness (which it seems to me is a live hypothesis), then we seem to be being asked from step one to imagine the possibility of a world where we have equidistance but no curvature.

    Now, this seems to contain a contradiction. So, we can only argue the zombie argument off the ground by assuming, frm the get go, that this type of relationship between the organisation of matter and consciousness does not exist. Hence the conclusion is embedded in the starting assumptions and the argument is indeed circular.

    Bernard

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  64. Hi Keith

    Yes, I can see that the notion of a purely physical world giving rise to conscious experience appears flat out implausible to you. It appears highly implausible to me to.o Then again, so does the general theory of relativity. So it is my instinct, developed over a lifetime of colliding with many such impolite implausibilities, not to equate implausible with impossible.

    You say you can't see how science could explain this link, and therefore this is a metaphysical question. If we are to take this as our definition of metaphysical, then the history of science is the history of metaphysical questions becoming physical, as our modes of enquiry improve. The movement of the planets through the sky was once considered a metaphysical question.

    There will always be unanswered questions, that do not yield to our current best modelling practices. The real metaphysical question, I think, is what to do in the face of uncertainty? Galbraith once quipped that there are only two types of economists, those that don't know and those that don't know they don't know. My own temperament is such that I resist most strongly the idea that because something can't be physically explained, a untestable, non-physical explanation is reasonable. What not just admit we don't know and keep on with our investigations (which in the area of mind/consciousness connections are just fascinating)?

    Bernard

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  65. Hi Bernard: I am not sure we haven't reached something of an impasse. I have claimed that as far as I can see, science cannot get a foothold on the question of whether consciousness a product of brain activity or not. You are suggesting that perhaps it can. So the only thing I'd ask you is this: can you suggest what kinds of experiment could address this question. They wouldn't have to be actually existing experiments, I'm open to mere possible ones. I have a hunch (which is not exactly what I mean when I say intuition:-) that brain scientists who claim to be moving toward explaining consciousness are really just reporting the way brain states affect peoples' experience of consciousness and from this they infer that the brain creates the consciousness. I don't thin the inference works.

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  66. Hi Keith

    What do we mean by creating consciousness if we don't mean the observable correlation between brain states and reported experiences? Standing in the rain leads to me getting wet, and so I infer that the rain causes the wetness. That the wetness is indeed just rain on me. Are you saying this inference doesn't work either?

    Bernard

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  67. Hi Bernard,

    JP thinks he has found a defect in the zombie argument, namely that it assumes that a zombie world is possible. I objected to his objection, pointing out that it is unreasonable to just assert that something may be impossible without giving at least some reasons why one thinks so. Unless one has some grounds to doubt that something is possible reason requires that one assumes that it is possible.

    Now, if I understand you correctly, you think you have found a slightly different defect in the zombie argument. You write: “We can only argue the zombie argument off the ground by assuming, from the get go, that this type of relationship between the organisation of matter and consciousness does not exist.

    Not at all. The zombie argument does not assume from the get go that in our world (i.e. in reality) there is no such relationship between organization of matter and consciousness. Quite on the contrary it starts by accepting that such a relationship *may* exist, and then sets out to prove that it doesn’t. That’s how all sound arguments work.

    Now let’s be clear what the zombie argument (as I interpret it) actually says. If successful (and I think it is successful) it proves that all explanations of consciousness that depend only on materialistic principles must be erroneous. So, to be precise, the zombie argument does not prove that the mind is not identical to the brain, or else that the brain does not produce consciousness, but rather that it is unreasonable to believe either. But the materialist may always dug her heels and suggest that perhaps reality does not conform to our standards of reason. Which position is not as crazy as it sounds. The theist is committed to the idea that reality is fundamentally intelligible, because it is based on the presence and action of a perfectly reasonable person. But the naturalist is not committed to the same idea, and is thus free to suggest that reality is absurd.

    Unfortunately suggesting that reality may be absurd does not help materialists very much. Here’s why: Either reality is intelligible and thus reason applies, or else is absurd. If intelligible then we can see that materialism is false. If absurd then it is unreasonable to hold any beliefs about reality, including materialism. Therefore, either materialism is false or else it is unreasonable to believe that it is true.

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  68. Hi Burk,

    You write: “I appreciate your logic, but I was not claiming proof. I was citing the available evidence, which unfortunately does not yet amount to proof.

    Neither am I claiming ironclad proof. I am only arguing that for some datum D to amount as evidence *for* some belief B (i.e. for some datum to supply us with some reason to lean towards B) there must be some asymmetry among the relationship of D with B and with not-B.

    So we have to make a weight-of-the-evidence argument instead.

    Fine with me.

    And that weight comes down extremely strongly on the physical basis of minds. There are countless physical interventions and manipulations that affect minds.

    Exactly the same countless physical interventions and manipulations that affect minds would obtain if dualism instead of materialism were true. So these data do not offer any support whatsoever for materialism.

    That a huge amount of data is exactly as one would expect if materialism is true says nothing, unless one can show that the same data would not be expected if non-materialism is true. If all the evidence in the crime scene fits with the hypothesis that the butler is the murderer, but fits equally well with the hypothesis that the mother-in-law is the murderer, that evidence cannot be construed as evidence *for* the butler being the murderer.

    On the other hand, there is no positive evidence for the dualist postion-

    I think there is, for example the huge amount of knowledge that science has discovered about physical elements and their interactions. If some property of physical systems of a particular structure produces consciousness, one would expect to find at least some inkling of that fact in the respective science. But one doesn’t. (Which, incidentally, is part of the hard problem of consciousness: the existence of consciousness is a superfluous hypothesis in the physical sciences; yet we can’t doubt that consciousness exists.)

    Please contrast the different structure of the two arguments.

    The pro-materialism argument looks like this:

    1. If materialism is true then X will obtain. (e.g. X=physical interventions affect minds).
    2. X does obtain.
    3. Therefore materialism is true. (Which is a false inference, and an example of the fallacy of affirming the consequent)

    The anti-materialism argument looks like this:

    1. If materialism is true then X will obtain. (here X=there should be something in all our knowledge of physical system that at least suggests that physical systems of a particular structure produce consciousness).
    2. X does not obtain.
    3. Therefore materialism is false. (Which is a valid inference of a type of argument called “modus tollens”)

    And an argument against materialism makes dualism more probable, because there are basically only three alternatives: materialism, dualism, and idealism. I am not saying I am presenting a proof, but I do claim I present some weak albeit real evidence against materialism and therefore for dualism.

    Are there ESP phenomena? No.

    Dualism does not imply that ESP phenomena should exist, so the fact that they don’t exist says nothing. Just pointing at a lot of data and calling them evidence for your point of view does not make it so.

    All I am saying is that out in the real world, where scientists are grappling with the actual details of how minds and brains relate, all bets go in one direction, with rich rewards in these lines of research.

    Well, it’s certainly true that most scientists who are naturalists are betting that the brain produces our consciousness, and many probably believe that there is an ongoing scientific program to discover how the brain manages to do that. Which only shows that many scientists form beliefs without having good grounds. It seems you too believe that there is such a scientific program, but I notice you are not suggesting an answer to the simple question I put previously in order to show that there can’t be any such scientific program.

    [continued bellow]

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  69. [continued from above]

    Science teaches us that information always has a physical instantiation.

    I disagree. The value of the centillionth digit in the decimal expansion of pi is clearly a piece of information but has no physical instantiation whatsoever. Problems like this have moved most philosophers away from materialism.

    So our mental lives, rich as they are in information, necessarily have a physical instantiation as well, which is the dynamic activities of our brains.

    Or perhaps the dynamic activities of our brain cause the information in our mental lives, as dualists believe.

    Thus also, any structure that is identical with a conscious brain will have consciousness- you simply don't have the choice that you, Chalmers, and Keith give yourselves.

    Even if it were true that all information has a physical instantiation, I don’t see how what you claim above follows. Suppose I replicate the structure of my brain in a computer simulation, and suppose further (as per your previous ungrounded hypothesis) that all informational content of my consciousness is physically instantiated in that computer. How does it follow that the computer is therefore conscious? After all, that information is instantiated in some physical system does not imply that there is some conscious experience of that information. Suppose a primitive computer program prints on a page a list of random words. The relevant information is physically instantiated, but unless a conscious being actually reads these words there is no experience of the respective information.

    Structure is ineluctably linked to function.

    Physical structure is ineluctably linked to physical function, yes. So?

    You are imagining that "mind" is disembodied, without any evidence or theoretical justification.

    I am imagining that mind is disembodied, because it prima facie appears to be this way. It is materialists who claim that this is not the case, but I notice they have not come up with a single reason that holds any water to justify what they claim. As far as I can see it’s all smoke and mirrors. On the other hand dualists (including atheists) have come with some in my judgment very strong arguments (such as the zombie argument) why the mind cannot be explained on purely physical principles.

    You are simply asserting what it is you claim to prove/advocate.

    Frankly, Burk, I think it’s you who does that. You state a claim, and then state a lot of scientific facts, as if there is a connection between the two. But on closer inspection there isn’t. Daniel Dennett has popularized this tactic, but this does not make it any more sound.

    I wouldn't say that the Turing test is gold-plated, but at some point, we will just have to accept that a being that behaves in a dynamically responsive and thoughtful way, as we and animals do, is presumptively conscious.

    Well I agree. And I notice that “presumptively” is a long way from “ineluctably”, “extremely strong evidence”, etc. Not to mention that the hypothesis that any system which passes the Turing test is a conscious is entirely compatible with dualism also. (And just to dispel any misunderstanding: I myself happen not to be a dualist. I am only pointing out that dualism works much better than materialism.)

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  70. Dianelos

    If consciousness just is a certain physical arrangement then this is true in all possible worlds by definition is it not? (Hence the circle example).

    You say the argument assumes this relationship may exist, which is the same as saying it may be true that zombies are impossible in any world. Yet if zombies are impossible the zombie argument doesn't fly, so the concession you make that zombies may be impossible appears to be a concession that the zombie argument may not work.

    JP appears to be quite right on this point, you are arguing a circularity here.

    Bernard

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  71. Hi, Dianelos-

    I admire your valiant persistence, and will make only a couple of observations. The essence of your argument is that consciousness is evidence, as is your intuition about its provenance. But consciousness is the mystery we are trying to explain, and evidence is something else- known rather than unknown pieces of information that have a discernable bearing on the mystery.

    Still less is your intution evidence, since it amounts to claiming that magic of some further mysterious kind accounts for the mystery of consciousness. When has such a claim of magic or supernaturalism ever accounted successfully for anything? Never- other than, as you point out, the remaining mysteries of quantum mechanics, which are not indeed explained, just observed.

    "If all the evidence in the crime scene fits with the hypothesis that the butler is the murderer, but fits equally well with the hypothesis that the mother-in-law is the murderer, that evidence cannot be construed as evidence *for* the butler being the murderer. "

    The problem is that the butler is at hand, is known to have been present during the crime, and known to posess a variety of implements and motives connected to the crime. On the other hand, the mother-in-law isn't even known to exist, let alone being present in any particular place, whether at the crime scene or elsewhere. Neither has she any readily ascertained motives, some eminent criminologists even at this late date disputing whether she has occasional foul tempers, or is perpetually of a sunny disposition, ready to forgive all misbehavior (despite being accused of this and other serious crimes!). She is, in short, an empty suit- an all-purpose imaginary hypothesis cooked up to explain everything that requires explaining, no matter how high or low. Bring her foward and identify her, and perhaps we can have a rational discussion about the case.

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  72. Hi Bernard,

    You write: “If consciousness just is a certain physical arrangement then this is true in all possible worlds by definition is it not?

    Not at all. Assume that consciousness is indeed a certain physical arrangement in reality (i.e. in our world). This does not imply that the same obtains in all possible worlds. After all there are possible worlds where consciousness exists but no physical things whatsoever (for example a world in which only geometric plane figures exist, and in which only circles are conscious). Or, there are possible worlds with a different kind of physical matter than exists in the real world (i.e. in our world), and which different kind of matter does not produce consciousness no matter how it is arranged.

    Perhaps you mean that if consciousness just is a certain physical arrangement then this is true in all possible worlds in which the same kind of physical things exist. If that’s what you mean then I agree, but then again the zombie world is not such a world. By definition the zombie world is a world in which a *different* kind of physical things exist.

    Bernard I find that the zombie argument is conclusive. If you still see some problem in it I’d very much like to understand where.

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  73. Hi, Dianelos-

    Could you explain why you take as your subject "a world in which only geometric plane figures exist, and in which only circles are conscious"?

    Isn't the point of philosophy and indeed the word "truth" itself to identify the characteristics of the actual world, not an imagined world where all your hypotheses are true?

    I am having a hard time figuring out how your various arguments connect with the overall point of our intellectual work.

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  74. Hi Keith,

    If the question is whether we can we explain consciousness on physical terms, then what can the zombie argument do for us?

    Saying that we can conceive of a possible world identical to ours except for consciousness is just assuming what you want to prove. To this extent, it is useless.

    Now, what about logical possibility? The claim is that such a world is logically possible – because it does not lead to a logical contradiction (for the sake or argument, let's assume that). What does that mean? Does that help us?

    It is logically possible that we are programs in a computer built by super-beings. It is logically possible that the oceans of Europa are teeming with life. It is logically possible that mountains are conscious and that cracking one to build a road is a sin punishable by eternal damnation. It is logically possible that the world was created five minutes ago. It is logically possible that the moon landing was a hoax. There is even a possible world in which eating chocolate cake will make you invisible. And, of course, it is logically possible that consciousness arises naturally from the laws of physics.

    What does any of these logical possibilities tell us about what is in fact the case? Nothing whatsoever. Ok - it's logically possible that consciousness is reducible to physics and logically possible it isn't. Big deal. What is it then? I fear that until some better method comes up we will need to do it the hard way – by looking, experimenting and checking things out.

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  75. Hi Dianelos

    Thank you for persevering, because, I am struggling to understand what the zombie argument is and what it tries to show and I would like to overcome this hurdle.

    At one point you have said things that are logically impossible (you give the example a four sided triangle) are excluded from all possible worlds. Do I have this right? If this is so, then one thing the zombie case needs to establish is that zombies are not themselves logically impossible.

    I am suggesting we should accept the possibility that consciousness is by definition a certain type of physical arrangement, making zombies logically impossible. This is why I am using the analogy of the circle (if we have equidistance from the centre in a certain type of geometric space, we also have curvature of the locus of points so defined).

    So, a simple yes/no question that will help me understand your case. Are you saying there is a possible world in which a locus of points drawn equidistant from a centre on a two dimensional euclidean plane (sorry if I have this terminology wrong) does not form a circle?

    Bernard

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  76. Hi Bernard,

    My understanding is that there is a scale of “possibilities”, among which “logically possible” is the weakest. This criterion has nothing to do with actual possibility (although it is a necessary condition). I gather that even false statements may be logically possible, as in Bernard Beckett lives in Montreal; or it's possible to go to Alpha Centauri and back in less than a week.

    If everything is logically possible (except trivial impossibilities like your circle example), then, it seems to me, the concept is irrelevant to the determination of actual facts about reality.

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  77. Hi Bernard: You said: I am suggesting we should accept the possibility that consciousness is by definition a certain type of physical arrangement, making zombies logically impossible.

    I'm not sure how to respond to this, but I'm gonna try. I claim that when you reflect on your own consciousness you are not thinking about any physical arrangement of anything. Before people knew anything about neuroscience they knew they were themselves conscious and were not thinking about any kind of physical arrangement. Thus (I argue) being a physical arrangement of something cannot be inherent to the CONCEPT of consciousness, it cannot be part of the definition.

    Help me out Dianelos:-) I'm right about this one thing aren't I? Explain how my thinking is wrong, JP, Bernard and Burk.

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  78. Part of Dianelos' argument depends on the idea of "possibility" which is actually a fairly vague term. Suppose I pick a card from a standard deck of cards, and out it in an envelope. Is it possible the card in the envelope is the Ace of Spades? That depends on what you mean. As a matter of fact, the card in the envelope is what it is, and if it happens to be the King of Clubs it isn't POSSIBLE it's the Ace. But if by "possible" we mean "for all you know it is..." then the card IS possibly the Ace. This kind of epistemic possibility is often what people mean when they say "anything's possible", it seems to me that this is the sense of possibility Dianelos was talking about. There's also logical possibility (or it's opposite, logical impossibility). If some quality Q is part of the concept of X, then it is not possible for X to lack Q. Now in this discussion, I would say that being a physical phenomenon ISN'T part of the concept of consciousness. When you reflect on the fact of your own consciousness you are not thinking about neurons firing, you are thinking about your awareness of things. If the firing of neurons was part of the DEFINITION of consciousness you wouldn't even know you WERE conscious until you learned a little neurobiology.

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  79. Hi, Keith-

    I'd agree that neither side here is allowed to smuggle in its suppositions as either conclusions or premises or definitions. So we can neither assume that consciousness is material nor that it is immaterial. That is what we are trying to determine.

    All we have is the experience of consciousness, and any connected phenomena we know of (we can bend spoons with our thoughts(?), we can abrogate consciousness by various physical means all impinging on the brain, we can exist consciously after death(?) or outside of our bodies(?), animals have thoughts too, related by evolutionary and developmental progressions to our own, etc.)

    We have to evaluate how well each of these pieces of evidence are themselves supported, and if valid, what they tell us of the physical basis or otherwise of thought.

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  80. (reposting)

    Hi Burk,

    You write: “But consciousness is the mystery we are trying to explain, and evidence is something else- *known* rather than unknown pieces of information that have a discernable bearing on the mystery.

    That consciousness exists is a known piece of information. In fact consciousness is the one thing we are absolutely certain exists. That it is mysterious is quite irrelevant. A lot of data are mysterious. Not to mention that consciousness is only mysterious from materialism’s point of view.

    Still less is your intution evidence, since it amounts to claiming that magic of some further mysterious kind accounts for the mystery of consciousness.

    I don’t know how you mean this. We are not here discussing any intuitions of mine, but the zombie argument. Which I argue is a conclusive argument that proves that all explanations of consciousness based exclusively on physicalist principles are erroneous. If you see any problem with that argument you’re welcome to point it out.

    When has such a claim of magic or supernaturalism ever accounted successfully for anything?

    Theism is a supernaturalistic understanding of reality and it certainly succeeds much better than naturalism in explaining, say, the deeply mathematical nature of physical phenomena, the fine-tuning of the physical constants, the complex behavior of physical primitives, the nature of quantum phenomena, never mind our sense of morality, our sense of freedom, and, of course, consciousness. Actually, I’d like to turn the table and ask you when did naturalism account successfully for anything?

    Or perhaps what you mean is that one doesnt’t need to believe in supernaturalism in order to build airplanes - which is true enough. But then again, neither does one need to believe in naturalism.

    Never- other than, as you point out, the remaining mysteries of quantum mechanics, which are not indeed explained, just observed.

    Quantum mechanics is one problem among many naturalism suffers from. And mysteries are just that: unexplained data. It is a historical fact that for the last 100 years or so mysteries are just piling on naturalism with alarming speed (originating mainly from science). It is rather amazing and says a lot about human nature how naturalists manage to simply ignore all that evidence year after year. The inertia of our intellectual culture, as well as the endurance of fashion, is quite remarkable.

    [continued in the next post]

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  81. [continued from above]

    The problem is that the butler is at hand, is known to have been present during the crime, and known to posess a variety of implements and motives connected to the crime. On the other hand, the mother-in-law isn't even known to exist, let alone being present in any particular place, whether at the crime scene or elsewhere.

    I gave that example in order to illustrate a basic point of logic, namely that the fact that some evidence is compatible with a belief does not imply that that evidence supports that belief. That’s a very common fallacy, called “affirming the consequent”, and as far as I can see explains why so many people still think that there is evidence for naturalism, when in fact there is none whatsoever, at least none I know of.

    As for your specific response above, I’d like to point out that theism is *not* the idea that, apart from butlers and mother-in-laws, God also exists. That has not been theism’s thesis at least since the Scholastics in the 12th century, not to mention since Plotinus in the 3rd century. To criticize a primitive theism as it was understood thousands of years ago, makes as much sense as, say, to criticize scientific thought of thousands of years ago.

    Theism, like naturalism, is a metaphysical hypothesis about the fundamental nature of reality. The proposition “God exists” does not make a claim about God but a claim about existence, namely that existence is fundamentally of a personal nature and not of a mechanical nature as naturalism has it.

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  82. Hi again Burk,

    You write: “Could you explain why you take as your subject "a world in which only geometric plane figures exist, and in which only circles are conscious"? Isn't the point of philosophy and indeed the word "truth" itself to identify the characteristics of the actual world, not an imagined world where all your hypotheses are true?”

    Yes, the only thing that matters is what is true about reality, i.e. for the world we exist in. Nevertheless, philosophers (and also scientists, most famously Newton and Einstein) have long found out that in order to establish such truths it is sometimes useful to use thought experiments. Lately, thinking about possible worlds (and in general using so-called modal logic) has proven to be quite effective. A possible world is defined as a hypothetical reality such that the set of all true propositions about it does not contain a logical contradiction. (As such a possible world can be very different than the real world.) Modal logic has been used, for example, by Alvin Plantinga to argue that there is no logical contradiction between the perfection of God and the existence of evil, an argument that most atheist philosophers accept as successful.

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  83. Hi Keith

    The fact that I can think of my conscious experiences as something other than a physical arrangement doesn't personally get me far. I can think of a rainbow as something other than refracted light, and well before we knew anything about the light spectrum we still saw rainbows. This doesn't lead me to conclude that rainbows are something other than light being bent my moisture in the air. Perhaps you are arguing that it should?

    Bernard

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  84. (reposted)

    Hi Bernard,

    You write: “At one point you have said things that are logically impossible (you give the example a four sided triangle) are excluded from all possible worlds. Do I have this right?

    Yes. A world in which a four sided triangle exists is a world where both propositions “this item has three sides (because it is a triangle)” and “this item has not three sides (because it is four-sided)” are true. But these propositions contradict each other, so that world is not possible.

    If this is so, then one thing the zombie case needs to establish is that zombies are not themselves logically impossible.

    No. Rather those who object to the zombie argument must establish that zombies are logically impossible even in a world with a different kind of matter than in the real world. Unless one has grounds to doubt that something is possible, reason requires that one assumes that it is possible. To deny this rather obvious epistemic principle leads into absurdities (as demonstrated by my examples about the two detectives, or about Galileo and the priest). Not to mention invalidates all rational discourse: You see an argument the conclusion of which you dislike? Just pick any of its premises and ask for a demonstration that what it states is not logically impossible. If an argument is given in response then pick any of its premises and ask for a demonstration that it is not logically impossible. And so on, ad infinitum.

    I am suggesting we should accept the possibility that consciousness is by definition a certain type of physical arrangement, making zombies logically impossible.

    I accept the possibility that in the real world consciousness is a certain type of physical arrangement. But from this it does not follow that the same must be true in all possible worlds, including for those with a different kind of physical matter.

    So, a simple yes/no question that will help me understand your case. Are you saying there is a possible world in which a locus of points drawn equidistant from a centre on a two dimensional euclidean plane (sorry if I have this terminology wrong) does not form a circle?

    I have trouble answering this question, because it is not universally agreed that circles exist in the real world. For example, materialists deny the existence of circles, for there is no material thing which instantiates a circle.

    The best I can do to answer your question is this: In all possible worlds where there exist geometric plane figures all the points of which are equidistant from some locus point, these figures are a circle (or a point).

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  85. Hi Bernard: What I was claiming about consciousness was that being brain behavior wasn't part of the CONCEPT, otherwise you couldn't even think about consciousness without that kind of brain behavior. The same is true about rainbows: since you can think about rainbows without thinking about the refraction of light though water droplets, refraction is not part of the concept of rainbows. Of course rainbows just happen to be caused by refraction of light, but it isn't a logical contradiction to suppose otherwise. Similarly for consciousness--even if consciousness were (is?) at the bottom caused by the way matter is organized, it's not a logical contradiction to suppose otherwise. I offered this in response to your suggestion that the zombie argument perhaps involved a logically contradictory premise (zombies are logically possible) from the get go.

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  86. Hi Keith,

    Let's suppose the question is whether water and its properties can be explained using the laws of physics (specifically from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen).

    Now, somebody points out that there is a possible world, with a radically different kind of matter but otherwise indistinguishable from ours (at the macro level). Specifically, there is something that behaves quite like water. Would it be correct to conclude that water can exist without hydrogen and oxygen?

    It all depends on what we mean by water. If we think of some vague “concept” of water, then what the argument (possibly) shows is that this concept has different implementations. However, if we're interested in understanding actual water in our world, then the argument is irrelevant – it shows nothing at all.

    But isn't this is what the zombie argument is doing? By considering some possible alternate world and a very vague notion of consciousness (when it's not squarely circular), it loses all relevance to the actual problem of consciousness.

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  87. Hi Keith,

    You write: “Before people knew anything about neuroscience they knew they were themselves conscious and were not thinking about any kind of physical arrangement. Thus (I argue) being a physical arrangement of something cannot be inherent to the CONCEPT of consciousness, it cannot be part of the definition.

    Let me start by saying that I basically agree. On the other hand a materialist may respond as follows: “We knew what water is long before we found out that water *is* (in the sense of “is identical to”) H2O. Similarly, consciousness *is* a physical arrangement, even though we used not to have and idea that it is so.”

    If you google “water is H2O” you’ll get tenths of thousands of hits, many in philosophical writings (example: “Kripke holds that water is H2O in all possible worlds”). Nevertheless that proposition is obviously wrong. Why? Because H2O denotes a molecule, or a type of molecule, and water is neither of those. What I suppose Kripke and others mean is that “water” denotes the same as “a collection of H2O molecules”. But this too is false, or rather is an equivocation, indeed an equivocation within an equivocation. Here is why:

    We have been using the word “water” since prehistoric times. So what do we mean by it? We mean the transparent stuff we drink when we are thirsty, we see solidify when sufficiently cooled, we see evaporate when sufficiently heated, that we can swim in, in which wood floats but stones don’t, and so on. So what we mean by that word, what that word denotes, is a particular set of experiences. Anybody who knows that set of experiences knows what we mean by “water” (even if she knows nothing at all of H2O). Now modern science has explained that particular set of experiences by *modelling* water as consisting of H2O molecules. Some people reify that scientific model and assume that H2O molecules objectively exist and that water in reality consists of H2O molecules. That view is called “scientific realism”. Scientific realism is a metaphysical hypothesis which may or may not be true. What is certain is that it is an equivocation to say that according to science water is a collection of H2O molecules, because that’s factually not the case.

    But let us suppose that scientific realism is true, and that scientific models do not just model phenomena but also describe the underlying reality which produces them. It is still an equivocation to say that water is a collection of H2O molecules. Why? Because what we now have is that a collection of H2O molecules *causes* the set of experiences denoted by “water”; not that that collection of molecules *is* what is denoted by “water”. Bertrand Russell, the famous atheist, put it concisely almost a century ago: “When it is said that light is waves, what is really meant is that waves are the physical cause of our sensations of light. But light itself, the thing which seeing people experience and blind people do not, is not supposed by science to form any part of the world that is independent of us and our senses.

    Getting back to the issue of consciousness the situation is much more serious still, for there is quite clearly not any scientific model of consciousness. Indeed it is not clear what it means to speak of a “scientific model of consciousness” in the first place. Science models physical phenomena, but consciousness is not a physical phenomenon, as evidenced by the fact that consciousness is not objectively observable whereas all physical phenomena are.

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  88. Hi JP: I think the zombie argument is definitely relevant to actual consciousness. I think your objection misses the mark. Your objection would make sense if you had already established that consciousness is a product of brain behavior--in that case the possibility that zombies could in principle exist would be irrelevant since the problem consciousness would be solved already. But nothing like that has happened, and I connot think of any kind of evidence that could possible resolve the question in favor of the physicalist view of consciousness. By the way, I would definitely appreciate somebody offering some possible experiement that would lead to the physicalist view of consciousness. That changing the brain changes the way people experience things doesn't seem to me to show any such thing. Changing my contact lenses also changes what I experience but they aren't producing my consciousness either. So for me, the possibility of zombies argues against materialism, it underscores the (what I find to be) implausible claim that consciousness is a natural effect of matter.

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  89. Hi Keith,

    Perhaps I'm expressing myself poorly. Let me try to rephrase.

    The starting point is this: the problem of consciousness is not solved; we don't know whether consciousness can be reduced to physics or not. Now, I will put aside for now the interesting question of what experiment could settle the matter one way or the other - I want to stay with our zombie friends for a moment.

    If you assume that in Zombie-World, everything is absolutely the same as in our world except there is no consciousness, you're begging the question. This is just stating your conclusion in fancy terms but it adds nothing. It consciousness is an optional add-in, then Zombie-World is possible; if it is a consequence of the physical arrangement of the brain, it isn't. How can that help us?

    If, on the other hand, you say that there is a possible world, with different physics in which human-like beings exist without being conscious, that doesn't help either. It's a different world and things are different. So what?

    Consider the water example. Playing the “we can conceive” game, there is a possible world in which water is not composed of anything but is itself a primitive substance. So what? It does not change the fact that water is something else in our world.

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  90. Hi, Dianelos-

    "Theism is a supernaturalistic understanding of reality and it certainly succeeds much better than naturalism in explaining, say, the deeply mathematical nature of physical phenomena, the fine-tuning of the physical constants, the complex behavior of physical primitives, the nature of quantum phenomena, never mind our sense of morality, our sense of freedom, and, of course, consciousness."

    How does theism explain all these things? I would be interested in what you think explanations consist of here. Take for one example something simple like the mathematical nature of physical phenomena.

    The naive observer (me) would assume that physical phenomena have to be physically self-consistent to exist at all, so they will have some kind of self-relationship that we can construct/abstract mathematically for our own convenience, or else our universe would be a big chaos and we wouldn't be here to observe it (anthropic principle), among many other difficulties. (Exemplified by the Noether's theorems on symmetry.) This is all without speculating on the original causes and logic of the universe unnecessarily.

    Your statement is that "existence is fundamentally of a personal nature and not of a mechanical nature as naturalism has it". This person is unknown, except through scriptures(?) and personal mystical experiences(?), neither of which have illuminated its properties in any clear way. Eric was just writing about how the bible supports everlasting hell, and supports non-hell. We can take our pick. So where is the explanation? Is the universe personally capricious? That is not what physics tells us. Physics ends at various mysteries, but what it knows is all either mechanistic (macro scale) or mechanistic+random (quantum scale).

    All I can make out is that theism "explains" things by giving you a "personal" totem on which you can hang anything you like, without knowing anything about it, without knowing anything about its connection with the mystery at hand, and without, frankly, acknowledging the clearly psychological orgins/nature of the totem and its various "explanations".

    It is not just that I favor mechanistic explanation over non-mechanistic. A drama-filled greek tragedy would do just as well to explain the cosmos.. if it were true. But your god can't even reliably supply that, since it is yet another made-up story with as many versions as there are imaginative theists.

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  91. Hi JP,

    You write: “Now, somebody points out that there is a possible world, with a radically different kind of matter but otherwise indistinguishable from ours (at the macro level). Specifically, there is something that behaves quite like water. Would it be correct to conclude that water can exist without hydrogen and oxygen?

    Assuming that by hydrogen and oxygen you mean what materialists imagine is out there then my answer is “yes”, obviously. It is true that water is successfully modeled using the scientific abstractions of hydrogen and oxygen, but whether oxygen and hydrogen exists as autonomous material elements (as per materialism), or exist as material elements sustained and guided by the will of God (as per theistic dualism), or exist as data structures in a computer simulation (as per the computer simulation hypothesis), or exist as an idea in God’s mind (as per subjective idealism), or exist as holograms on a two-dimensional plane (as an exotic but very interesting interpretation of science has it) - is an open question.

    It all depends on what we mean by water. If we think of some vague “concept” of water, then what the argument (possibly) shows is that this concept has different implementations. However, if we're interested in understanding actual water in our world, then the argument is irrelevant – it shows nothing at all.

    You speak as if you already know what the correct understanding of the “actual water in our world” is. Is that right? If so, how did you find out? Surely it’s not on scientific principles, because, as you recognize above, the macro level which conforms science’s observations can be produced by different underlying realities.

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  92. Hi JP,

    You write: “If you assume that in Zombie-World, everything is absolutely the same as in our world except there is no consciousness, you're begging the question.

    The zombie argument says that in the zombie world everything, down to each elementary particle, is different than how it is in our world (according to the materialistic understanding). Specifically the difference resides that in the zombie world, that different kind of matter, does *not* produce consciousness when organized in some particular way. So how is that hypothesis “begging the question”?

    This is just stating your conclusion in fancy terms but it adds nothing.

    I don’t see how. The zombie argument starts by assuming that perhaps in our world matter when organized in a particular way produces consciousness. Then it asserts that it is possible for a different world to exist, with a different kind of matter, which when organized in the same way does *not* produce consciousness. Can you point out what the “fancy terms” are, or why suggesting that in a different word than ours with a different kind of matter than ours consciousness may not be produced as it is produced in ours – is to beg the question, or state one’s conclusion? For I really do not see where.

    It consciousness is an optional add-in, then Zombie-World is possible; if it is a consequence of the physical arrangement of the brain, it isn't.

    Suppose that in our world consciousness is the consequence of the physical arrangement of the brain. Are you suggesting that if it is the case in our world that consciousness is a consequence of the physical arrangement of the brain then the same must also be the case in a different world with a different kind of matter? If so doesn’t this strike you as a really extraordinary and arbitrary claim? Indeed it’s an impossibility claim, namely that matter cannot possibly fail to produce consciousness when arranged in a particular way, even if that matter is different than the matter we have in our world. Do you have any justification for that impossibility claim? I can’t imagine why a different kind of matter cannot possibly *lack* the property of producing consciousness when arranged in a particular way. I am really trying to understand how you think about this issue.

    It's a different world and things are different. So what?

    Well, that’s what’s so interesting about the zombie argument: It uses that hypothetical different world to establish truths about our world, the real world. In this case the truth established in our world is an epistemic one, namely that no argument based solely on physical principles can explain the consciousness that exists in our world.

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  93. Hi Dianelos

    Given your answer about circles, how can we be sure that the relationship between physical arrangement and consciousness is not analogous, and hence the zombie becomes a contradiction? Note I am not claiming that this is the case, only that it is possible. Concede this possibility, and the argument fails.

    You write that unless one has grounds to doubt something is possible, the appropriate convention is to call it possible. But let's not fall into the trap of only applying the principle when it suits us.

    Bernard

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  94. Hi Keith

    Yes, I don't argue that the zombie argument contains a logical contradiction from the get go. I argue that it might (that this is the very point in question in fact). It is this possibility that seems to me to undermine the zombie argument.

    Bernard

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  95. Hi Bernard: This is my current understanding of the current state of the debate.

    1. Materialism holds that everything that exist is really physical phenomena. Conscious definitely exists--at least you know for sure you own does--thus according to materialism it is a physical phenomenon. We do not know how consciousness emerges FROM matter but that doesn't imply it doesn't. The idea of philosophical zombies might be interesting enough (to a certain kind of seedy character like Keith:-) but since it's at least POSSIBLE that consciousness (naturally, without any kind of divine action or such) emerges from matter, then the zombie argument doesn't really help us decide the question.

    2. But I brought up the idea of zombies to explain something about why I find materialism implausible. I don't believe that atoms are sentient, I don't believe rocks decide to fall to the earth when dropped, I believe they are examples of matter moving according to the laws of physics. In fact, to me it seems initially implausible that matter ever would become sentient on its own, and I do not see any evidence to suggest otherwise. In fact I cannot imagine any kind of thing that would even BE evidence for that. In other words, it seems to me that IF materialism were true THEN we'd all be zombies. Given that, the fact the we are not all zombies entails materialism isn't true. This pushes me in the direction of theism. I am not begging any questions here, I am not trying to prove zombies are possible by assuming their possibility. I am taking it for granted that they are possible, and thinking about them leads me to reject materialism. Since you don't accept my premises, the argument doesn't work for you.

    That's how

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  96. Hi Keith

    Thanks for that, I think it's a fair summary. So I am brought back to my tired old theme. Believing anything does indeed require a set of assumptions to be made, and this I think leads to a responsibility to get the assumptions out front and centre.

    Your assumption that zombies are possible is in effect an assumption that consciousness is something other than physical activity. Fine. It's a reasonable thing to assume, I understand the intuition very well, I feel its pull myself. From this you conclude that materialism can't explain consciousness. But this conclusion doesn't requite much work, as it is in effect the starting assumption restated. So why not just cut to the chase and say 'I choose to believe that science will never explain consciousness because that just doesn't feel right to me.'

    One reason people might be reluctant to express this so starkly is the obvious rejoinder that, had we taken this approach to any of our past puzzles (what is life, why do eclipses occur, why do we see rainbows...) we'd never have progressed our understanding. In each case, before the solution was proposed, it was tremendously difficult to see how a solution could be proposed.

    So, the argument that we don't know how (or even if) we can come up with a satisfactory material explanation of consciousness, doesn't appear to be a useful argument against believing it may be possible. This, it seems to me, is a lesson we can draw from history. Unless of course we can show that the problem of consciousness is a different kind of problem altogether. The zombie argument seems to want to do this, which is why its failure seems important to me.

    Bernard

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  97. Hi Burk,

    You write: “The naive observer (me) would assume that physical phenomena have to be physically self-consistent to exist at all, so they will have some kind of self-relationship that we can construct/abstract mathematically for our own convenience, or else our universe would be a big chaos and we wouldn't be here to observe it (anthropic principle), among many other difficulties.

    I find that careless use of language can mislead one’s thinking. As physical phenomena do not exist in a world in which consciousness does not exist, I’d like to correct your language thus: “Stable physical events (i.e. events that allow mathematical description) can only exist in a world with mathematical order in it.” I quite agree with you on this point, this is almost a truism. Incidentally, it is interesting to notice that mathematical order is difficult to avoid, and is present even in chaotic systems.

    Now your main argument seems to be this: “If our universe were not mathematically ordered we wouldn’t have evolved and therefore wouldn’t be here to observe it in the first place.”. If so I have the two observations:

    First of all, the use of the anthropic principle is of questionable reasonableness. Here’s a counterexample: “Why is the sun hot? Because if it weren’t we wouldn’t exist and wouldn’t be here to ponder the question”. It is true that if the sun weren’t hot we wouldn’t be here to ponder the question, but this does not explain why the sun is hot. Similarly, the fact that if the fundamental physical constants of our universe were not fine-tuned for life we wouldn’t be here to ponder the question does not explain why they are fine-tuned. I think there is general agreement on the epistemic point that the anthropic principle while true explains nothing, and that’s why naturalists have had to suggest the existence of the multiverse, i.e. the existence of a huge number of invisible parallel universes for which no scientific evidence whatsoever exists.

    My main point though is that in the case at hand (the deep mathematical order of our universe) the anthropic principle does not apply in the first place, because, as it demonstrably turns out to be the case, the Darwinian algorithm does *not* require a deeply mathematical environment to work. In other words, among all mechanical universes where Darwinism does work to the degree that intelligent life will evolve in them, the vast majority are universes which are *not* deeply mathematically ordered. But ours is. That’s why I think the deep mathematical order of our universe is even stronger evidence against naturalism than the apparent fine-tuning of its structure.

    Your statement is that "existence is fundamentally of a personal nature and not of a mechanical nature as naturalism has it". This person is unknown, except through scriptures(?) and personal mystical experiences(?), neither of which have illuminated its properties in any clear way.

    Well, there is a two step process here.

    First one can decide, on reason alone, that as naturalism suffers from so many conceptual problems it is probably false, and that therefore the alternative view of a personal/purposeful reality is probably true.

    [continued bellow]

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  98. [continued from above]

    The second step is to reason about the probable properties of that personal reality. The reasoning process for that second step is similar: Given different alternatives, which one better explains the data at our disposal? You mention the example of an issue close to Eric’s current interest. If one assumes that reality (including ourselves) is grounded on the presence of one person whom we call God, and given how we are and how we perceive the moral dimension of the question, which is more probable: that God is of a vengeful nature and will eternally punish the personal creatures S/He created who displease Him/Her, or that God is of a loving nature and will not fail to bring every one of His/Her creatures to perfection?

    Observe that the reasoning processes described above is based on data, i.e. in our own experience of life.

    Now you mention scripture, and it is true that in our experience of life we find the presence of scripture, Christian scripture among many. That is certainly data one should take into account, because it preserves some of the best religious thought of the ancient world. My reason tells me that only a fool would ignore the best thought that others could come up with. So I personally do not ignore scripture, but neither of course consider it flawless. Indeed, scripture quite clearly was written to serve many purposes (e.g. political purpose) beyond preserving the best religious thought, and indeed sometimes fails to preserve it. What’s more scriptures are ancient, and all religious thought of the last thousand years at least is by definition not to be found in them. So what I think is more reasonable is to use scripture as a starting point, or as a generator of ideas, among many other written sources about religion.

    You also mention mystical experiences, which are just one particularly strong type of religious experiences. There is no doubt that religious experiences exist; most people, including myself, have had them. So it would be absolutely foolish to simply ignore them. Especially after deciding that it is much more probable that the foundations of reality are not mechanical but personal, and that therefore there must be some kind of personal relationship with that foundation open to us.

    Physics ends at various mysteries, but what it knows is all either mechanistic (macro scale) or mechanistic+random (quantum scale).

    Just a clarification about language. My use of the concept of “mechanistic” includes randomness. Randomness is entirely mechanical, indeed some very powerful algorithms (say, the Monte Carlo method) depend on the use of randomness. And some very powerful machines (say, tunneling microscopes) depend on randomness too.

    All I can make out is that theism "explains" things by giving you a "personal" totem on which you can hang anything you like, without knowing anything about it, [snip]

    That’s a popular view, often voiced by naturalists. It is also demonstrably false. It is an observable fact that *atheistic* philosophers write long and carefully crafted papers presenting arguments in relation to theistic thought. That wouldn’t be the case if theistic thought were arbitrary (a totem on which you can hang anything you like), would it? So here again I am afraid we have a case where naturalists ignore the evidence at hand, and indeed form beliefs that go contrary to the evidence.

    A drama-filled greek tragedy would do just as well to explain the cosmos.. *if it were true*.

    You have that backwards. Truth is often based on explanations, see “abductive reasoning” (or “inference to the best explanation”). Among two hypotheses the one which works better is more probably true. Detective work, not to mention science, depends on that epistemic principle.

    Also I think that Greek tragedies do reveal deep truths about reality. Much of great art does.

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  99. Hi Bernard,

    You write: “Given your answer about circles, how can we be sure that the relationship between physical arrangement and consciousness is not analogous, and hence the zombie becomes a contradiction? Note I am not claiming that this is the case, only that it is possible. Concede this possibility, and the argument fails.

    No, I don’t think so. First of all, I concede the possibility you speak of. Indeed it is possible that some unknown logical principle makes it impossible for matter, even matter different from ours existing in a different world, to fail to produce consciousness when arranged appropriately. So it is possible that a premise of the zombie argument is false. So what? I mean it’s not like that the mere possibility that a premise is false destroys the validity of an argument. If that were so then all arguments, up to and including mathematical proofs, would fail. As I have argued before, to simply suggest without any grounds that something may be impossible leads to absurdities and is therefore unreasonable.

    To argue that an argument fails you must give some reasons why you think some premise is false; pointing out the mere possibility of it being false definitely does not cut it.

    To repeat: Nobody claims that the zombie argument is absolute proof. Indeed, as I have explained, it is possible that reality is absurd in which case no knowledge about reality is possible. What I have claimed is that, under the light of reason, the zombie argument is conclusive. And to point out that it is possible that some premise of this argument is false, without giving any reason why suspect that it is false, does not decrease that conclusiveness.

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  100. (I’ve just found out that this post from yesterday failed to post, so I am re-posting it)

    Hi Keith,

    You write: “Before people knew anything about neuroscience they knew they were themselves conscious and were not thinking about any kind of physical arrangement. Thus (I argue) being a physical arrangement of something cannot be inherent to the CONCEPT of consciousness, it cannot be part of the definition.

    Let me start by saying that I basically agree. On the other hand a materialist may respond as follows: “We knew what water is long before we found out that water *is* (in the sense of “is identical to”) H2O. Similarly, consciousness *is* a physical arrangement, even though we used not to have and idea that it is so.”

    If you google “water is H2O” you’ll get tenths of thousands of hits, many in philosophical writings (example: “Kripke holds that water is H2O in all possible worlds”). Nevertheless that proposition is obviously wrong. Why? Because H2O denotes a molecule, or a type of molecule, and water is neither of those. What I suppose Kripke and others mean is that “water” denotes the same as “a collection of H2O molecules”. But this too is false, or rather is an equivocation, indeed an equivocation within an equivocation. Here is why:

    We have been using the word “water” since prehistoric times. So what do we mean by it? We mean the transparent stuff we drink when we are thirsty, we see solidify when sufficiently cooled, we see evaporate when sufficiently heated, that we can swim in, in which wood floats but stones don’t, and so on. So what we mean by that word, what that word denotes, is a particular set of experiences. Anybody who knows that set of experiences knows what we mean by “water” (even if she knows nothing at all of H2O). Now modern science has explained that particular set of experiences by *modelling* water as consisting of H2O molecules. Some people reify that scientific model and assume that H2O molecules objectively exist and that water in reality consists of H2O molecules. That view is called “scientific realism”. Scientific realism is a metaphysical hypothesis which may or may not be true. What is certain is that it is an equivocation to say that according to science water is a collection of H2O molecules, because that’s factually not the case.

    But let us suppose that scientific realism is true, and that scientific models do not just model phenomena but also describe the underlying reality which produces them. It is still an equivocation to say that water is a collection of H2O molecules. Why? Because what we now have is that a collection of H2O molecules *causes* the set of experiences denoted by “water”; not that that collection of molecules *is* what is denoted by “water”. Bertrand Russell, the famous atheist, put it concisely almost a century ago: “When it is said that light is waves, what is really meant is that waves are the physical cause of our sensations of light. But light itself, the thing which seeing people experience and blind people do not, is not supposed by science to form any part of the world that is independent of us and our senses.

    Getting back to the issue of consciousness the situation is much more serious still, for there is quite clearly not any scientific model of consciousness. Indeed it is not clear what it means to speak of a “scientific model of consciousness” in the first place. Science models physical phenomena, but consciousness is not a physical phenomenon, as evidenced by the fact that consciousness is not objectively observable whereas all physical phenomena are.

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  101. Hi Dianelos

    You are attempting to have your cake and eating it here I'm afraid, by simultaneously attacking and applying the same principle of logic. My contention is that you need to choose one, and whichever one you choose the zombie argument falls over. Whether you are deliberately avoiding this point I have no way of telling.

    I of course am no materialist when it comes to the mind. We don't yet know the details of brain organisation well enough to make the call either way. To do so prematurely in favour of theism is to make exactly the error you accuse materialists of. Wait and see I say. Humility of this type is often rewarded.

    Bernard

    Bernard

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  102. (This is my third intent to have this posted)

    Hi Keith,

    You write: “Before people knew anything about neuroscience they knew they were themselves conscious and were not thinking about any kind of physical arrangement. Thus (I argue) being a physical arrangement of something cannot be inherent to the CONCEPT of consciousness, it cannot be part of the definition.

    Let me start by saying that I basically agree. On the other hand a materialist may respond as follows: “We knew what water is long before we found out that water *is* (in the sense of “is identical to”) H2O. Similarly, consciousness *is* a physical arrangement, even though we used not to have and idea that it is so.”

    If you google “water is H2O” you’ll get fifty thousand hits, many in philosophical writings (example: “Kripke holds that water is H2O in all possible worlds”). Nevertheless that proposition is obviously wrong. Why? Because H2O denotes a molecule, or a type of molecule, and water is neither of those. What I suppose Kripke and others mean is that “water” denotes the same as “a collection of H2O molecules”. But this too is false, or rather is an equivocation, indeed an equivocation within an equivocation. Here is why:

    We have been using the word “water” since prehistoric times. So what do we mean by it? We mean the transparent stuff we drink when we are thirsty, we see solidify when sufficiently cooled, we see evaporate when sufficiently heated, that we can swim in, in which wood floats but stones don’t, and so on. So what we mean by that word, what that word denotes, is a particular set of experiences. Anybody who knows that set of experiences knows what we mean by “water” (even if she knows nothing at all of H2O). Now modern science has explained that particular set of experiences by *modelling* water as consisting of H2O molecules. Some people reify that scientific model and assume that H2O molecules objectively exist and that water in reality consists of H2O molecules. That view is called “scientific realism”. Scientific realism is a metaphysical hypothesis which may or may not be true. What is certain is that it is an equivocation to say that according to science water is a collection of H2O molecules, because that’s factually not the case.

    [continued bellow]

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  103. [continued from above]

    But let us suppose that scientific realism is true, and that scientific models do not just model phenomena but also describe the underlying reality which produces them. It is still an equivocation to say that water is a collection of H2O molecules. Why? Because what we now have is that a collection of H2O molecules *causes* the set of experiences denoted by “water”; not that that collection of molecules *is* what is denoted by “water”. Bertrand Russell, the famous atheist philosopher, put it concisely almost a century ago: “When it is said that light is waves, what is really meant is that waves are the physical cause of our sensations of light. But light itself, the thing which seeing people experience and blind people do not, is not supposed by science to form any part of the world that is independent of us and our senses.

    Getting back to the issue of consciousness the situation is much more serious still, for there is quite clearly not any scientific model of consciousness. Indeed it is not clear what it means to speak of a “scientific model of consciousness” in the first place. Science models physical phenomena, but consciousness is not a physical phenomenon, as evidenced by the fact that consciousness is not objectively observable whereas all physical phenomena are.

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  104. Hi Bernard,

    You write: “You are attempting to have your cake and eating it here I'm afraid, by simultaneously attacking and applying the same principle of logic.

    Can you please clarify that?

    The only principle I have been suggesting is that it is unreasonable to claim that something is perhaps impossible without giving some grounds for that claim. Or, equivalently, that it is unreasonable to demand a demonstration that something is possible without giving some grounds to suspect that it is not possible.

    First of all, do you agree with that epistemic principle or not?

    Secondly, where is it that I myself am applying that principle?

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  105. Hi Bernard,

    You write: “Your assumption that zombies are possible is in effect an assumption that consciousness is something other than physical activity.

    Why? I don’t see how that follows at all. The assumption that zombies are possible in a different world than ours, a world in which matter has different properties, is in effect an assumption that *in that different world* consciousness does not exist even though some particular arrangement or activity of matter exists. But the zombie argument does not assume that the same is the case in our world, nor does it conclude that the same is the case in our world. Let’s call “N” the proposition “Every time in our world there is some particular physical arrangement or activity of matter there is also consciousness” The zombie argument does not conclude that N is false. Indeed N is an entirely reasonable belief which only solipsists deny.

    Perhaps you are reading more into the conclusion of the zombie argument than really is there. Let’s call “M” the proposition “Consciousness in our world is some physical arrangement or activity”. The conclusion of the zombie argument is not that M is false. Rather the conclusion is that all arguments that conclude M are erroneous, and that therefore it is unreasonable to believe M. Finally, observe that M is a very strong claim, which goes far beyond the almost universally accepted N.

    In any case, I find something amiss in yours and JP’s reasoning, at least to the degree I understand it. Consider this: All successful arguments are such that their conclusion is present in their premises. For example the Pythagoras theorem is already implicit in the axioms of plane geometry. But this does not imply that all geometry is “circular” because all its theorems are already “assumed” by its axioms.

    In conclusion all successful arguments say the following: Unless you have reason to deny the truth of the argument’s premises P1 and P2 (and the validity of epistemic principles Q1 and Q2 used by the argument) then you should accept the truth of the argument’s conclusion. (Just pointing out that mere possibility that P1 or P2 are false has not epistemic value whatsoever, for any premise is just possibly false.)

    The key premise of the zombie argument is that the zombie world does not entail a logical contradiction (which is what one means when one says that the zombie world is “possible”). So, can you provide any reason why to at the very least suspect that this premise is false? What kind of logical contradiction might be entailed in the zombie world?

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  106. Hi Dianelos,

    I think I understand what you've been saying: that there is no logical argument proving that consciousness can be reduced to physics. Is that it? If so, of course you're right. For that matter, there is no logical argument proving the opposite either. We don't need zombies to know that, I'd say.

    But that does not help much. Since logic alone cannot establish the fact of the matter, what will? Seems to me our best option is to let scientific research follow its course and see what will come out of it. And expect to be surprised.

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  107. Hi JP: You wrote: But that does not help much. Since logic alone cannot establish the fact of the matter, what will? Seems to me our best option is to let scientific research follow its course and see what will come out of it. And expect to be surprised.

    I am still having trouble imagining ANY scientific result that would count as evidence for this question. Any ideas?

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  108. Hi Dianelos

    The logical contradiction that might be entailed is the possibility that consciousness just is physical arrangement. This is one of the live hypotheses (others being that consciousness is distinct from the arrangement, but caused by it, or that consciousness is separate from and not caused by...)

    So, under one of the hypotheses being considered, there is no possible world in which zombies exist, just as there is no possible world in which four sided triangles exist. I am suggesting, as a principle of investigation, that when we are attempting to judge the relative merits of opposing hypotheses, that the conclusion of one of the hypotheses should not be embedded in the premise of the investigation.

    This is why the example you use of geometric reasoning doesn't apply here, as we are in involved in a different type of investigation, one of weighing up the reasonableness of alternative hypotheses. And here JP is right, I think, we should conclude that we can not by logic alone force the assertion that consciousness is material, or indeed immaterial.

    So, let us leave zombies alone, they take us no further than points upon which we both already agree, namely that when we think of consciousness as a physical entity we are proposing not a picture of reality but a model of it (as per your water example). Now, when it comes to models, the question becomes which of alternative models does the best job? And that requires a criteria by which models can be judged.

    I claim that the material model of consciousness does the best job because it offers a way forward. By continuing to unravel the way the physical brain functions, we are continuing to improve our understanding of what consciousness is (or at least I am.) Because I can see no way in which the rather fanciful alternatives can lead to advancement in our understanding, I have very little interest in them.

    Bernard

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  109. Hi Keith

    I don't know that your failure to imagine how science can progress is particularly relevant here. It tells us, I suppose, that you are unlikely to be the person to make the breakthrough in this area, but little more.

    Meanwhile people continue to study how memory is stored, the function of mirror neurons in self reflection, the evolution history of self awareness, change blindness, the impact on reported conscious experience of neurological damage and many other things besides. Each, it seems to me, enhances our understanding of consciousness a little more, and reduces the field of ignorance in which the ineffable consciousness is allowed to roam.

    The question, in the end, is will this space ever become so small that people cease to see consciousness as a mystery at all, as has happened with our notion of life. I don't think we can answer this in advance, either way. But we can move forward, tiny step at a time. The naysayers who call, 'ah, but you can't there from here' are entitled to their pessimism, but it is in the end just an instinct they find comfort in, as is my optimism.

    Bernard

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  110. Hi JP,

    You write: “I think I understand what you've been saying: that there is no logical argument proving that consciousness can be reduced to physics.

    No, that’s not at all what I am saying. I am saying that there is a sound argument (and all sound arguments are logical) showing that no explanation of consciousness can be given on physical concepts alone. From this it follows that there is more to reality than what is referred to by physical concepts.

    Which strikes me as rather obvious in the first case. It’s not just about consciousness. The existence of abstract objects such as numbers does not fit with the idea that there are only physical things in reality. Neither does the existence of beliefs. Embracing the idea that there is more to reality than materialism’s view makes naturalism more powerful, so the only reason I can imagine naturalists may have for resisting the demise of materialism is this: Without materialism one cannot uphold the idea that the physical sciences are sufficient for establishing all objective or factual truths, simply because the physical sciences deal exclusively with physical concepts. But why should that be a problem? We can reason beyond the scope of the physical sciences, and indeed we do this every day of our lives. I think that the fear of going beyond the physical sciences reveals a failure to trust in one’s own reasoning capacity. That fear is not exclusive to naturalists by the way. Many theists too fail to trust in their own reasoning capacity and resist going beyond scripture, which, if anything, is even more lamentable.

    David Chalmers, who has thought more deeply about the problem of consciousness then most, thinks that there will be a scientific explanation of consciousness, but one that can be reached only through several scientific revolutions. By “revolution” he does not mean revolutionary discoveries, but rather revolutions that redefine or reconstitute science. A basic factor, he says, is that science must take into account all data in our disposal, including subjective data. Whether subjective or objective, private or public, data are data. On the other hand it seems to me that such a revolutionized science looks awfully like natural theology – so it seems Chalmers’s project for the future has been underway for thousands of years now. The good news is that today we have the benefit of the huge amount of knowledge that has come out of the physical sciences, and thus can avoid much of the superstition and magicology that has plagued natural theology in the past.

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  111. Hi Keith,

    You write: “I am still having trouble imagining ANY scientific result that would count as evidence for this question.

    Well I can’t imagine any scientific result either. Beyond all the talk about scientific advances to understand consciousness, the fact remains that there isn’t even a scientific test to ascertain whether consciousness is present or not, which does not bode well. How can science study something the presence of which it has no means to detect?

    Anyway, the standard answer materialists give to your question above is to point out that in the past nobody could imagine how the complexity of the species could be explained on unthinking mechanistic principles either. Which is true. One difference of course is that people at least knew where life was present. The most important difference though is that there are sound arguments that show that a physical solution to the problem of consciousness does not exist. We have been discussing the zombie argument, but this is not the only one. Here’s another, in my judgment at least as conclusive an argument:

    Assume that materialism is true and that our consciousness is produced by a material system. Then it is possible (indeed, arguably, quite probable) that we live in a computer simulation. In this case it is false that our consciousness is produced by our brain, and all supposedly scientific research to find out how our brain produces our consciousness is vacuous. In other words, if materialism is true then whatever science might discover about physics and about our brain cannot possibly establish or at least make it more reasonable to believe that it is our brain that produces our consciousness, because the same would be discovered if we live in a computer simulation.

    To expect that the physical sciences will explain consciousness is just a pipe dream, it seems to me. I wish naturalists could go over it and let the discourse move to some more productive region. Like: Why can’t consciousness be a basic and irreducible property or perhaps substance of a mechanistic (and hence naturalistic) reality?

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  112. (reposted)

    Hi Keith,

    You write: “I am still having trouble imagining ANY scientific result that would count as evidence for this question.

    Well I can’t imagine any scientific result either. Beyond all the talk about scientific advances to understand consciousness, the fact remains that there isn’t even a scientific test to ascertain whether consciousness is present or not, which does not bode well. How can science study something the presence of which it has no means to detect?

    Anyway, the standard answer materialists give to your question above is to point out that in the past nobody could imagine how the complexity of the species could be explained on unthinking mechanistic principles either. Which is true. One difference of course is that people at least knew where life was present. The most important difference though is that there are sound arguments that show that a physical solution to the problem of consciousness does not exist. We have been discussing the zombie argument, but this is not the only one. Here’s another, in my judgment at least as conclusive an argument:

    [continued bellow]

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  113. [continued from above]

    Assume that materialism is true and that our consciousness is produced by a material system. Then it is possible (indeed, arguably, quite probable) that we live in a computer simulation. In this case it is false that our consciousness is produced by our brain, and all supposedly scientific research to find out how our brain produces our consciousness is vacuous. In other words, if materialism is true then whatever science might discover about physics and about our brain cannot possibly establish or at least make it more reasonable to believe that it is our brain that produces our consciousness, because the same would be discovered if we live in a computer simulation.

    To expect that the physical sciences will explain consciousness is just a pipe dream, it seems to me. I wish naturalists could go over it and let the discourse move to some more productive region. Like: Why can’t consciousness be a basic and irreducible property or perhaps substance of a mechanistic (and hence naturalistic) reality?

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  114. Hi Bernard: I don't see how the fact that changes to the brain are correlated with changes in reported conscious experiences points in any way toward consciousness itself being a product of brain activity. Those data seems to me to be no less consistent with the idea that at the bottom of it all we are conscious souls that USE brains to experience the world. It seems like an unwarranted leap to say the brain produces consciousness.

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  115. Hi Dianelos,

    You got me very confused. You wrote above that the point of the zombie argument is to establish that all arguments that conclude M are erroneous where M is “Consciousness in our world is some physical arrangement or activity”.

    I can make sense of this it it means this: there is no logical contradiction in the concept of Zombie-World, therefore there exists no logical proof of M.

    But this works both ways. As there is no logical contradiction entailed by M (specifically in conceiving a world in which M holds), therefore “all arguments that conclude that M is false are erroneous”.

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  116. Hi, Keith-

    I agree that issue is an empirical one as are most issues of truth where the basic facts are not yet in, and there are no known logical bounds (at least no logical bounds that a supernaturalist recognizes). And it is a very worthy question.

    I would start by positing that consciousness is not uniquely human by any means. It is a graded property- from our massive experience, down through the smaller conscious experience of a squirrel, to the marginal one of a lizard, to .. I am not sure where one could assume it is absent. Bacteria are responsive, but clearly not conscious. Flies are highly responsive and have brains, so I would guess they have a form of consciousness, however tiny.

    This leads to the proposition that consciousness is clearly a product of evolution, which has material manifestations in all of its other known workings, so one would presume that it does in this matter of consciousness as well.

    That was just an argument, not a test. But it also leads to a reflection on how we could tell whether something like a squirrel (forgive me, they are in our yard a lot) has consciousness. How would they behave if they didn't have consciousness? I think the distinction can be drawn in terms of their breadth of interest and their internal modelling of reality (or fantasy, if it comes to that). When one sees a squirrel trying to figure out how to get into a bird feeder, sees the gears turning and the tail swishing, then sees the experimentation and repeated attempts, one recognizes a mind at work.

    Such a mind has to have several properties- it models its world, it computes on those models and evaluates them based on its emotions and interests (generally that of getting more food, in this case, though avoiding predators and attaining social status are a few others). It is continuously responsive to the world, using its modelling to infer unseen patters and estimate the success of as yet untried actions.

    I don't think you could have all that without some kind of consciousness. An analog might be the automated self-navigating cars that are being tested out these days. Are they conscious? Well, they are conscious of their environment, in a very narrow way. If a gorilla wandered into their path, they would be conscious of an obstacle, but not that the gorilla is a biological being, with parents and emotions, etc. It could give us a constant narration of its experiences in the vary narrow confines of its interests... aligning the trip plan with the road it is on, perhaps.

    So I would argue that such a vehicle exhibits a tiny consciousness, and though the human form of consciousness is far different in scale and contents, construction, timing, etc., it is likewise composed of awareness that integrates knowledge and sensation into perception and thought.

    This is just a suggestive line of thought, not an open and shut case. But I think work along this line will make us more comfortable with the idea that consciousness emerges from material foundations. And more broadly, science is often accused of lacking imagination. But it is precisely here that imagination is most required- not to make stuff up, but to devise ways to break down and logically pick apart mysteries of reality.

    cont...

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  117. cont...

    To take a second approach, consider whether consciousness can exist without content. Is there a bare "sensation" or "experience" without something going through it? Can we think without thinking *about* something? I don't think so. This would suggest that whatever consciousness is is tied up intimately with the data of consciousness, and may be nothing more than alot of data, organized and flowing in a particular sort of way, as above in the autonomous vehicle example.

    If there is anything we know about our brains, it is that they have physical systems for storing memories and conducting sensory content. They store data, and compute on that data. No data that the brain uses has been documented to come from outside other than through our senses. So likewise, there is no need for consciousness to have any outside components either, if one models it as simply a particular flow of data.

    And as for Chalmers, if he is so sure of these pending scientific revolutions, he would serve us better by formulating them than blithely predicting them.

    And for Dianelos .. "Assume that materialism is true and that our consciousness is produced by a material system. Then it is possible (indeed, arguably, quite probable) that we live in a computer simulation. In this case it is false that our consciousness is produced by our brain, and all supposedly scientific research to find out how our brain produces our consciousness is vacuous."

    This fails to make sense. If consciousness is produced by a material system, then we do live in a computer simulation.. which is produced by our brain. There is no "us" separate from it, however, so it would be better to say that our minds are a computer simulation running in the brain. That it has a subjective experience distinct from anything we can observe from the outside is intrinsic to such a complex system, and ultimately, the real test will be to reproduce such systems artificially, which can by their self-reports, verify their own experiences of consciousness. Perhaps then you would argue that they now also have supernatural souls, due to some magical property of matter at high levels of complex construction.

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  118. Hi Keith

    What you say in your last post regarding correlation is quite correct, and is certainly not the point I am making. Sorry if I was unclear.

    Bernard

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  119. Hi Burk and Keith,

    Sorry for butting in, but I find this issue endlessly interesting. Consciousness is the most important fact there is, and I find it fascinating not only to think about it, but also to observe how other people think about it.

    Burk, you write:“I would start by positing that consciousness is not uniquely human by any means. It is a graded property- from our massive experience, down through the smaller conscious experience of a squirrel, to the marginal one of a lizard, to ..

    Do you have any evidence for these?

    I am not sure where one could assume it is absent.

    Yeah, that’s the problem with making the apparently reasonable assumptions you posit above. On naturalism why assume that, say, thermostats are not conscious? They don’t have a biological brain, but they do have a brain of sorts, and it looks like biological chauvinism to exact our kind of brain for consciousness to exist. Such thoughts have led some naturalists to embrace panpsychism.

    Bacteria are responsive, but clearly not conscious.

    As a teenager I used to spend hours observing live bacteria under the microscope, and I can testify that they look like being very conscious indeed.

    That was just an argument, not a test.

    Actually it looks more like you are applying or else trying to device some kind of test.

    An analog might be the automated self-navigating cars that are being tested out these days. Are they conscious? Well, they are conscious of their environment, in a very narrow way.

    Well, if self-navigating cars are conscious, why not bacteria?

    This is just a suggestive line of thought, not an open and shut case.

    Right. But as Keith has often pointed out, it is not at all clear how the physical sciences might possibly help answer such issues. And I notice that nobody has really given Keith any answer on this. Moreover, given the various philosophical arguments we have been discussing, it seems quite clear to me that such questions are beyond the scope of the physical sciences, or, to be more concise, are scientifically meaningless questions (indeed they cannot be asked using the physical concepts which science exclusively uses). But they are deeply meaningful for us.

    At this point, we can turn the table and ask how theism might answer the same questions. First of all let us notice that theism has an epistemic advantage: According to theism all that exists is designed and sustained in existence by God for some ultimate purpose. If reason can help us find what that purpose is, then we have grounds (a test) to decide questions about where consciousness is present. To find out what God’s purpose is, is what theodicy is about – and theodicy is a vast discussion. Perhaps here I could suggest what my own understanding implies about consciousness:

    Given the nature of theism, the test for consciousness is of a personal nature. If a being is capable of moral reasoning then clearly that being is not only conscious, but also conscious is a special way which is characterized by some measure of autonomy. In other words, all beings capable of moral reasoning (whether human, extraterrestrial, or artificial) possess free will. This much is, I find, quite clear. Now what about animals? I’d say that all animals (and artificial beings too) with which we can relate in a personal way (i.e. in a way characterized not only by moral concern, but also by love) are conscious beings too, albeit conscious beings with a more primitive range and more shallow depth of experience than we. Thus one arrives at a list not that unlike Burk’s, namely that consciousness exists down to squirrels but probably not lizards and certainly not microbes and self-driving cars.

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  120. Hi Burk,

    You write: “ Can we think without thinking *about* something? I don't think so.

    I fully agree. The concept of consciousness entails the presence of content (or experience). Actually it entails the presence of two things: First the content of that consciousness and secondly the subject (or perhaps subjects) of that content.

    If there is anything we know about our brains, it is that they have physical systems for storing memories and conducting sensory content. They store data, and compute on that data. No data that the brain uses has been documented to come from outside other than through our senses. So likewise, there is no need for consciousness to have any outside components either, if one models it as simply a particular flow of data.

    I think that’s the one good argument against theism (“good” in the sense that it certainly looks sound and if found to be sound should turn our mind away from theism). Let me rephrase it slightly (I trust I am understanding you correctly):

    If one assumes that people are conscious beings and that they do not systematically lie about their conscious experiences (both extremely plausible assumptions) then science has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that all experience (including qualia or the qualitative/private/subjective dimention of consciousness) exactly correlates with physical processes in our brain. Given the physical closure of the physical universe (which too science has established beyond reasonable doubt) the fact that all content of our consciousness exactly correlates with physical processes in our brain leaves no space for us to experience or know anything about facts beyond the facts of the physical universe, and thus leaves no space for us to experience or know anything about God. The only possibility left is Deism, i.e. the existence of some kind of absend landlord.

    Despite how conclusive that argument looks, it turns out that, given how modern science describes the physical universe, it is possible for God to freely and massively meddle with the history of the universe and even with the life of individual human beings *without* violating the physical closure of the universe. That the physical universe we find ourselves in should have that remarkable property (indeed a property no theist assumed was even possible before modern science discovered it) is for me perhaps the most conspicuous evidence for design – much more so than the apparent fine-tuning of the fundamental constants, or the extravagantly deep mathematical nature of the universe, or the magically computational prowess of fundamental particles.

    (Nevertheless, that scientific solution was discovered only recently, and I think it is very interesting as a matter of historical theology to study how hard-thinking theists managed to hang on to their worldview before that. It’s true that the perfect correlation between mind and brain had not been so well established then, but was assumed by many educated theists nonetheless.)

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  121. Hi Keith

    I have an unexpected moment, so let me attempt to revisit what I have previously failed to make clear to you.

    You have put a challenge to those unconvinced by the dualist argument, and if I have you right it is 'how could science ever establish that physical phenomena cause consciousness, and are not just correlated with it?' My tendency is to see this as somehow trivial, in that this is not a challenge that is unique to consciousness. Indeed it is a version of the challenge to induction isn't it? We see correlation and assume causation, and we may be quite wrong. Of course.

    So what to do? Well we can ignore the problem and make the assumption. I tend to do this, at least at the pragmatic day to day level. Or we can say:
    'ah, here is a place where I can insert my favoured story. Although consciousness appears to be physically caused, I believe it is actually a portal to God, pixies, the great sacred anthill, etc etc. Although rain appears to cause me to get wet, I understand that wetness is actually the weeping of my ancestors...' You know the drill.

    Beyond one's aesthetic sensibilities, I don't know how to go about choosing between the infinite stories available. I am delighted that people find pleasure in them though, and ask only that they consider owning the narrative impulse, admitting that such truths are of their own invention. And again, let me stress, there is nothing at all wrong with this. It's even an acceptable definition of truth, just so long as we're explicit about it.

    Meanwhile, what science can do, is probe the nature of the correlation, which will do a number of very useful things. In my case, it is helping me refine what I mean when I blithely use a term like consciousness. It is also underpinning important advances in psychiatry, neurology, education and so forth. No small matter.

    Meanwhile, my own challenge regarding the circularity of the zombie argument awaits a response. Anyone?

    Bernard

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  122. Hi Bernard,

    You write: “You have put a challenge to those unconvinced by the dualist argument, and if I have you right it is 'how could science ever establish that physical phenomena cause consciousness, and are not just correlated with it?'

    What we know is that there is a correlation between physical events in our brain and experiences, not between physical events and consciousness. That’s a huge difference. Nobody is objecting to the claim that brain events correlate with experience, nor indeed that brain events cause experiences.

    The real question is what causes a physical system to be conscious in the first place, and thus be able to have experiences in the first place. After all, thermostats too react to their environment by way of physical events that take part in their “brain”, but very few people believe that thermostats are therefore conscious beings.

    But let’s concentrate on human brain only. So, let’s assume that brain science has completed its discoveries and that we now have a complete list which details the correlations between brain events and conscious experiences with exquisite precision. Assume that the list works perfectly well, so that a scientist just by observing the events in a brain can predict exactly how a subject will describe what she is experiencing. So what? How would that scientific advance (which would be useful in many ways, say for producing better medicine against pain) help answer the question of whether it’s the brain which causes consciousness or whether human consciousness is a supernatural substance which experiences and thinks via brain events? I think one can see that science wouldn’t help at all, not matter how well it understands the physical workings of the brain.

    Meanwhile, what science can do, is probe the nature of the correlation, which will do a number of very useful things.

    Sure. As you say, that knowledge would be of great help in many applications, including psychiatry and education. And of course in many fields of medicine.

    In my case, it is helping me refine what I mean when I blithely use a term like consciousness.

    It would interest me greatly to understand in what sense the scientific listing of correlations between brain events and experiences helps you refine what you mean by “consciousness”, for I really have no idea.

    Meanwhile, my own challenge regarding the circularity of the zombie argument awaits a response. Anyone?

    Well, I did give an answer some time back in this thread. See my posts from March 3, 4:59 AM, and from March 5, 10:13 AM.

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  123. Hi Dianelos,

    If what you say is assuming that Zombie-World is possible, then something…, this is circular reasoning. The question is precisely to determine whether it is or not.

    If you argue on purely logical ground and accept anything that does not present a logical impossibility, then the Zombie Argument may not be circular but it becomes all but pointless, as I have tried to point out.

    Now, you claim that the default position concerning Zombie-World is to assume it exists, in the absence of decisive argument either way. More generally, this principle would allow one to assume the truth of any proposition P if there is no proof of P or its opposite. I don’t think you want to claim this.

    There is, it seems to me, a much more reasonable approach: when we don’t know whether something is true or not, simply accept our ignorance. There is nothing wrong in saying “we don’t know”.

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  124. Hi, Dianelos-

    "Despite how conclusive that argument looks, it turns out that, given how modern science describes the physical universe, it is possible for God to freely and massively meddle with the history of the universe and even with the life of individual human beings *without* violating the physical closure of the universe. That the physical universe we find ourselves in should have that remarkable property (indeed a property no theist assumed was even possible before modern science discovered it) is for me perhaps the most conspicuous evidence for design"

    Note that the key word here is "possible". Not evident, not documented, not known, but possible. This is a thin thread indeed on which to hang your theodicy, hopes, theory of consciousness, and afterlife. To be explicit, the claim is that the randomness of quantum mechanics, though observed in every instance to be truly random, (fully unpredictable, conforming only to well-known probability distributions), could, by your model of reality, be momentarily quite unrandom, embodying twiddles by your hypothesized personal, self-creating or mysteriously perpetual creator & maintainer of this material universe.

    And you claim that this is a reasonable and solid theory, justifying all the bizarre and contradictory dreams of those benighted theologians working before the advent of QM? I'm sorry- this is fantasy. It is only too clear that you are mapping your hopes and traditions onto a completely blank slate.

    I realize that you are only doing a rather free-form version of induction, as is the right of all hypothesizers and scientists. But while casting stones at those who induce with vastly more & relevant evidence the physical / brain basis of mind / consciousness, you seem here to be living in an epistemological glass house.

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  125. Hi Dianelos

    I am puzzled, at times, by the approach you take. The zombie argument appears to have no heft, beyond the claim 'if we assume consciousness is not defined as a physical process, then we can show the following conclusions...'

    Well, fine, but if we don't make this assumption, we can go nowhere with it. Your claim that all logic requires assumptions is quite correct, but it is also correct to say the best we can therefore conclude is that, given assumption A, B is implied. Apply that to the zombie argument, and you have, given consciousness is not a purely physical phenomenon, we can conclude it is unreasonable to believe consciousness is a purely physical phenomenon. This point, you have not yet answered.

    For me the entire game with consciousness is defining the quality in question. In what ways, for example, is the conscious experience of remembering my wife's face the same as the conscious experience of seeing a photograph of it, or seeing it before me? That's not a simple question, and by better understanding the mechanisms of memory, imagination and association, we can begin to discover some of the shades of consciousness, rather than using consciousness as an imprecise generic term.

    So this is one of many many ways scientific advances can and will continue to deepen my understanding of what consciousness is.

    Bernard

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  126. Hi Bernard:

    Thanks for your response. I don't know if I am getting closer to understanding your view, but I hope this helps clarify mine. You wrote...Although consciousness appears to be physically caused, I believe it is actually a portal to God, pixies, the great sacred anthill, etc etc.

    But there's the rub. Consciousness DOESN'T appear to me to be physically caused. In fact, to me it seems prima facie implausible for the physical to cause something like awareness. If zombism were true I'd agree that the behavior of consciousness would seem physically caused. But actual consciousness? I don't see it. This is different from rain causing the sidewalk to get wet. Rain DOES seem to me to cause the sidewalk to get wet.

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  127. Hi Keith,

    Things are not always as they seem, and they may look differently depending on the point of view. While consciousness, as experienced, does not seem physical, it is also true that if all its manifestations were shown to perfectly correlate with physical aspects of the brain, it would then seem to be physical from this point of view.

    But, in any case, how good is this “it seems like” criterion? It certainly doesn't seem to me that each moving object carries its own time (as per relativity): this is “obviously” absurd – but also true. For that matter, the Earth does not seem round at all, looks quite flat to me.

    You say that is is implausible for the physical to cause something like awareness. But why do we find some things plausible and others not? Isn't that largely caused by our past experiences and learning? Major breakthroughs in our understanding of reality have often been achieved by jumping boldly in the realm of the implausible and unexpected.

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  128. Hi JP,

    You write: “If what you say is *assuming that Zombie-World is possible, then something…*, this is circular reasoning.

    Why? I don’t see any circularity at all. Indeed observe that Z=”the zombie world is possible” and M=”in our world the physical brain causes our consciousness” are logically independent, and they might *both* be true. So it’s not like if one assumes that Z is true one must accept that M is false. There is demonstrably no circularity present here.

    And in any case observe that conclusion of the zombie argument is *not* that M is false. The conclusion of the zombie argument is that all arguments the conclusion of which is that M is true are fallacious. Or, in other words, the conclusion of the zombie argument is that it is unreasonable to believe that M is true.

    Now, you claim that the default position concerning Zombie-World is to assume it exists, in the absence of decisive argument either way.

    Nobody is claiming that the zombie-world exists. Quite on the contrary, everybody agrees (I certainly do) that zombies do not exist in reality, and that every time real matter is appropriately organized in the real world there is consciousness present.

    The only claim is that the zombie world is possible, in the sense that its existence (if it existed) would not entail any logical contradiction. That physical matter (i.e. some mechanistic substance) which is different than ours might fail to produce consciousness in a different world, is as obvious an assumption as it gets. In any case, as I have argued before, it is unreasonable to demand a demonstration of possibility (i.e. of the absence of logical contradiction) without at least giving some reason why one suspects there must be some contradiction (and I notice nobody has suggested such a reason). I have already mentioned two examples of how unreasonable it is to demand demonstrations of possibility: A detective in a murder case might argue that she is not investigating the butler because nobody has proven that it is logically possible that the butler is the murderer. And the priest might refuse Galileo’s argument for a heliocentric system pointing out that Galileo assumes that it is possible for Jupiter to have moons without having demonstrated it.

    There is nothing wrong in saying “we don’t know”.

    When there is good reason to believe something, then to insist that “we don’t know” is, in my judgment, very wrong. And indeed dangerous: For it is at least as harmful to fail to hold a true belief as it is to hold a false belief. Agnosticism is no panacea, and is justifiable only when there are really no good grounds for making up one’s mind.

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  129. Hi Dianelos,

    Let me try to understand you once more.

    You say that [t]he only claim is that the zombie world [...] would not entail any logical contradiction. From this, you claim it follows that all arguments the conclusion of which is that M is true are fallacious (where M is as above). I take it that you mean arguments based on logic alone. You then conclude that it is unreasonable to believe that M is true.

    The structure of your argument is this: let S be any statement about reality. If we can establish that there is no sound argument proving S then it is unreasonable to believe S is true. The argument does not depend at all on its zombie subject matter. It would apply generally to any statement that is not trivially true (based on logic).

    For example, it is unreasonable to believe that water is made of hydrogen and oxygen because there is no logical contradiction involved in conceiving a world where it is not the case. It is also unreasonable to believe that the force gravity is proportional to the square of the distance for the same reason. And so on. Nothing at all is reasonable under your principle.

    Now, you may have other reasons to reject statement M. But the zombie argument by itself does not do it – unless you accept to apply it generally to, well, everything.

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  130. Oups... inversely proportional, of course.

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  131. Hi JP: You make a good point of course when you note that things are not always as they seem. But it seems to me that unless we have a good reason to believe things are different than they seem, "it seems this way" is the default, remaining opne to the possibility that we are wrong about it. In the case of relativity, the old Newtonian view didn't fit the data, and relativity was (I'd claim) the more plasuible alternative to the Newtonian view because of how well it fits the data compared to alternative views. I don't see the same thing going on with "consciousness is a physical product". Specifically I don't see why a perfect correlation between brain states and consciousness provides any reason at all to see consciousness as a physical product. To me that result would seem to indicate that there's reality has a dimension that transcends the physical, that the physical is but one aspect of a deeper reality. In fact, this is part of why the whole consciousness thing leads me toward there being a spiritual dimension to reality, which is part of the nudge in the direction of theism.

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  132. Hi Keith

    I think you're right that when faced with something that appears implausible there is always the option just not to buy it, unless excellent evidence comes to hand. For me, the elephant in the room here is that the alternative is no less implausible, which is what leaves me thinking 'let's just wait and see if anyone can get us closer on this thing' is a very appealing approach.

    To recap, there are a number of possibilities with regard to consciousness. One, strongly materialist explanation is that consciousness is exactly that feeling experienced by a particular form of physical complexity. Asking why it feels that way (or feels like anything at all) becomes akin to asking why the locus of points equidistant from a centre has the shape of a circle, (or has any shape at all). Under this possibility, scientific advancement may one day help us to understand at least on some level how the trick is achieved. Or maybe it will forever be beyond us, this ignorance might itself be defined by the same physical organisation. And of course, the zombie argument is unable to show this an unreasonable belief, as it must assume this hypothesis is false (i.e that zombies are logically possible) before it can do its work.

    At the other end of the spectrum, there sit versions of dualism. Consciousness may be correlated to physical activity, but they nevertheless have some mysterious extra element.

    I find both of these instinctively implausible. The first, for reasons similar to yours, the second because it presupposes that this extra element interacts in some way with the physical configuration of the brain in order for consciousness to occur, without us having any inkling how this might happen, or why this particular form of interaction has this outcome. We have no model, no data, no nothing really.

    Hence,it seems to me, unless one has a prior narrative investment in one version over the other (personally I'd be most excited by evidence in favour of either) then the sensible approach is surely to just let the evidence accumulate (and one should be open to advancement either through scientific methodology, or piercing philosophical insight, just so long as it flies).

    Bernard

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  133. (reposted)

    Hi JP,

    If I understand you correctly you are raising the following objection: If the structure of the zombie argument is sound then we can use it to test the reasonableness of claims beyond the field of consciousness. The structure of the zombie argument when used with belief X leads to an absurdity. Therefore the structure of the zombie argument is unsound. Therefore the zombie argument is unsound.

    I agree this far. What remains is to find a successful counterexample X.

    You propose the following: “For example, it is unreasonable to believe that water is made of hydrogen and oxygen because there is no logical contradiction involved in conceiving a world where it is not the case.

    I have already commented on the claim that water is H2O in the March 4, 8:49 AM post in this thread. In the current context it is important to realize that the claim that water (or rather what causes our experience of water) consists of hydrogen and oxygen atoms is a metaphysical claim implied by scientific realism. (Physics only says that the model of water as consisting of hydrogen and oxygen atoms successfully predicts many of the physical phenomena related to water.) Let me now apply the structure of the zombie argument to this question. It goes like this:

    There exists a possible world in which all scientific observations of water are identical to ours but in which water does not consist of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Any argument in that possible world which depends exclusively on scientific observations and concludes that water (in that world) consists of hydrogen and oxygen atoms is therefore erroneous. The same argument in our world would be epistemically equivalent, for it uses the same premises and the same epistemic principles. Therefore any argument in our world based exclusively on scientific observations which concludes that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen atoms is erroneous.

    Which is quite right. There may be sound arguments which show that water in our world consists of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, but these will be philosophical arguments that do not depend exclusively on scientific observations. So far then I think we have here a successful example of the application of the structure of the zombie argument.

    [continued next]

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  134. [continued from above]

    Nevertheless, contrary to the case of the zombie argument, the above argument about water does not show that *all* arguments that show that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen atoms are erroneous, and that therefore it is unreasonable to believe that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen. The zombie argument does show that to believe that the brain produces consciousness is unreasonable. So why is there this difference? The difference consists in that zombie argument is directed against materialism. If materialism is true then the *only* arguments that may be sound are arguments which are based on physical facts alone. According to the zombie argument all arguments based only on physical facts that show that the brain produces consciousness are erroneous. Therefore, *within the context of materialism*, *all* arguments that show that the brain produces consciousness are erroneous. Therefore, within the context of materialism, it is unreasonable to believe that the brain produces consciousness. But if one rejects materialism *then* perhaps there are sound arguments that show that the brain produces consciousness. The zombie argument only shows that it is unreasonable for a *materialist* to believe that the brain produces consciousness (exactly as is the case with the other argument based on the computer simulation hypothesis), but it leaves open the possibility that a non-materialist may reasonably believe that the brain produces consciousness. Interestingly enough there are theistic philosophers (e.g. Peter van Inwagen) who being theists are not materialists by definition, but who nevertheless believe that human beings are nothing more than material objects, and thus believe that the brain does produce consciousness. For them that belief may be reasonable.

    In conclusion, even though I think your counterexample fails to demonstrate that the structure of the zombie argument is unsound, it did help me understand better what the zombie argument actually says.

    [continued next]

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  135. [continued from above]

    You mention a second counterexample: “It is also unreasonable to believe that the force gravity is proportional to the square of the distance for the same reason.”. According to the best scientific model of gravitational phenomena (i.e. general relativity) there is no such thing as “force of gravity”, so one should not hold any beliefs about the force of gravity even if one has embraced the metaphysics of scientific realism. So I think this second counterexample does not even get off the ground.

    I was thinking about your project and have tried to find counterexamples myself. One case concerns the question of inverted spectra. A world in which 25% of the people experience colors as inverted (i.e. they experience fresh grass as red, and ripe strawberries as green) is possible. The structure of the zombie argument shows that no argument based exclusively on scientific observations can establish whether there are people in our world who experience an inverted spectrum of colors. In other words, we have an argument which shows that the so-called problem of inverted spectra allows for no scientific resolution.

    In general it seems to me that arguments of the structure of the zombie-argument can establish (rather than just suggest as obvious – the way Kant did centuries ago) the limits of exclusively scientific knowledge.

    In any case, JP, this is a productive line of thought, and you are welcome to suggest other counterexamples. I will keep trying to find them too. Thinking about this we shall either demonstrate some defect with the zombie argument, or else succeed in strengthening it. It’s a win-win situation.

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  136. Hi Bernard: About the plausibility of immaterial mind affecting matter, I don't see that as any less plausible than gravity or magnetic forces (i.e. any of the "forces at a distance") where one object exters a force on another without touching it. I know that gravity exists so I know there exists that "magic" connection between bits of material. I also know that my mind can make the matter in my hand move.

    About the plausibility of mind being a physical phenomenon: I don't see how the way matter is arranged in the brain ought to correlate at all with correct beliefs about the world. The zombie argument may not prove as much as Dianelos claims, but it seems to me that it at least proves that having accurate beliefs about the world isn't a requirement for survival, since one needn't refer TO a person's beliefs to account for it behaving in ways that are survival conducive. I don't see a reason to think that (absent a sentient being behind them) the laws of physics would produce accurate inner sensations and ideas about the way the world works. If materialism were true, it seems to me that we'd likely be totally ignorant about the material world.

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  137. Hi Bernard,

    You write: “To recap, there are a number of possibilities with regard to consciousness. One, strongly materialist explanation is that consciousness is exactly that feeling experienced by a particular form of physical complexity. Asking why it feels that way (or feels like anything at all) becomes akin to asking why the locus of points equidistant from a centre has the shape of a circle, (or has any shape at all).

    The concept of the circle is defined by using the concepts of centre and equidistance, but the concept of consciousness, as Keith has pointed out, is not defined using concepts of the brain, or its structure, or its physical processes. So this analogy does not work.

    Or maybe it will forever be beyond us, this ignorance might itself be defined by the same physical organisation.

    That’s a possibility which the so-called New Mysterians (such as philosopher Collin McGinn) defend. The thought goes more or less like this:

    According to materialism and/or to scientific naturalism what we call “reason” is just a pattern of thought that has evolved naturally (biologically and sociobiologically) because it offers survival advantages. But the survival of humans (and before that of hominids) depends on thinking about middle-sized phenomena, such as attacking tigers or the growth of food or the cure of illness or the building of shelter, and thus on evolving the appropriate cognitive tools to produce knowledge about them. One should not therefore expect that reason will work well on epistemic fields which are irrelevant to the mechanism of evolution, such as metaphysics and the question of the ultimate nature of reality, or how consciousness fits in it. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that difficulties arise when we try to apply reason to metaphysical questions, and indeed the application of reason in such questions will probably mislead us. The mechanism of natural evolution has simply not bred in us cognitive faculties for dealing with questions that are of no survival value, and which must therefore for ever remain beyond our ability to understand.

    The above argument attacking the possibility of having metaphysical knowledge sounds OK at first, until one realizes that it is based on materialism’s and/or scientific naturalism’s understanding of reality. But both materialism and scientific naturalism are themselves metaphysical positions about the fundamental nature of reality. So the above argument turns out to be self-defeating: Embracing materialism’s or scientific naturalist’s worldview leads one to the belief that we should not trust in our cognitive capacity for producing metaphysical knowledge, and therefore that it is unreasonable to embrace materialism or scientific naturalism in the first case. (The current argument is a special case of Plantinga’s EAAN argument.)

    And of course, the zombie argument is unable to show this an unreasonable belief, as it must assume this hypothesis is false (i.e that zombies are logically possible) before it can do its work.

    All arguments (and indeed all thought) start by claiming that it is reasonable to assume that something is true or is false, simply because it is evidently so. The fact that the zombie argument does the same does not in any way count against it.

    At the other end of the spectrum, there sit versions of dualism. Consciousness may be correlated to physical activity, but they nevertheless have some mysterious extra element.

    On what grounds do you call it “mysterious”? It’s a fact that most philosophers throughout history, as well as most common-sense people (even at childhood) believe in some kind of dualism, precisely because the idea that consciousness is entirely a physical thing strikes them as inconceivable. So, under any objective criterion, it’s materialism’s view of consciousness that should be called “mysterious”.

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  138. Hi, Keith-

    "About the plausibility of immaterial mind affecting matter, I don't see that as any less plausible than gravity or magnetic forces (i.e. any of the "forces at a distance") where one object exters a force on another without touching it. I know that gravity exists so I know there exists that "magic" connection between bits of material. I also know that my mind can make the matter in my hand move. "

    If I might comment, the problem is that you are supposing something ad hoc and unknown to cover the dual mental hypothesis. In contrast, materialists don't propose that consciousness requires anything other than the physical ingredients we know about, seen subjectively from an internal perspective as they compute away about their business.

    I realize that, as Dianelos says, the dualist mental hypothesis has long been extremely popular with people high and low. That is something that materialists can also offer a coherent account for, in that it is engineered to seem just that way. Are we conscious of our little toe? Generally not, unless it has been injured. We are unconscious of most things, and especially of how our brain constructs consciousness. Nothing could be more useless than such deep self-consciousness, so it is little wonder that it seems like magic. It is the most advanced (bio)technology, but everything we learn, as we learn it, says that it is entirely founded on biology.

    The situation closely resembles that of evolution, which has engineered forms so perfect and wonderful that people naively have great reluctance to see their cause in blind processes and mundane materials. But there we are.

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  139. Hi Dianelos

    Sorry to stick with this one, but you are ignoring something crucial. Yes, all arguments begin by assuming something is possible or impossible. They then proceed by constructing a line of logic such that they can conclude, 'given my starting assumption, the following things are also implied...'

    Now, the zombie argument stats with the assumption zombies are possible. But note, this is the same as starting with the assumption that the materialist stance, that by definition consciousness is just a physical arrangement (and so zombies are logically impossible), is wrong. So, the zombie argument in essence says, if materialism is wrong, then we can show this implies it is unreasonable to believe in materialism. Well, I agree entirely with the logic of this argument, of course. But its point is trivial.

    I start with a different assumption, that materialism may be quite right here, and so the zombie argument offers me nothing because the opening assumption, 'zombies are possible' is not available to me. I don't know how many different ways I will need to express this point before you address it, but I am happy to persevere for now.

    Your sweeping claim that the circle analogy does not apply is again based upon your personal belief. Fair enough, you are entitled, but to pretend there is any force of logic behind this is dishonest. If materialism holds, then the circle analogy holds. That's all I'm claiming, or need to claim for the purpose of this argument.

    With regard to your notion of the self defeating argument, this holds only if one adheres to the sort of materialism you caricature but nobody appears to believe. So long as there is a degree of agnosticism in the balance (so we start with the statement 'to the extent evolution describes the process by which the human brain developed...;) then there's no such problem. Those who wish to argue, then need only to establish a better model than evolution. Good luck to them.

    Bernard

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  140. Hi Keith

    I entirely accept that to you dualism doesn't seem implausible. I don't even argue it should seem implausible to you. Each to their own. I was pointing out that to me it appears highly implausible. A lot of the data you use I personally don't accept (can my mind make my hand move, or is it just my brain doing that?) The point is, plausibility becomes a lousy judge when our plausibility meters pull us in opposite directions. We can't both be right and as always, to claim 'I'm right and you're wrong just because that's how it feels to me', smacks of a certain arrogance.

    This idea of not needing beliefs in order to interact with the world is a brave one. It may well be that the impetus for the evolution of the large human brain was exactly the survival advantage of belief forming (particularly the calculative efficiency of modeling the behaviour of others in a complex social environment as being motivated by beliefs.)

    It seems to me that there is a tendency here for people to freight their conclusions in at the outset, hidden amongst assumptions that appear reasonable but upon examination turn out to be question begging.

    Remember, I'm not arguing for strict materialism here, just an open mind.

    Bernard

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  141. Hi Burk: I don't think dualist view is any more ad hoc than the materialist view. The dualist view says that the non-physical mind can somehow cause the matter of the body to move, the materialist says that conscious awareness somehow emerges from the way matter is organized. Both views seem to be on equal footing on that.

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  142. Hi Keith,

    You write: The dualist view says that the non-physical mind can somehow cause the matter of the body to move, the materialist says that conscious awareness somehow emerges from the way matter is organized. Both views seem to be on equal footing on that.

    Precisely. As you put it, none of the above is much of an explanation. The difference however is that the dualist view appears to be stuck at the “somehow” stage while the materialist understanding of consciousness increases day by day.

    The question of what constitutes an explanation is, I think, very important here. I am puzzled, for example, by the claim that theism explains consciousness (or whatever, your choice). As an explanation, it's no better than saying the sky is blue because, well, you know, the laws of physics make it so. An explanation would consist in describing the path between the latter and the former, not in stating what the end points are.

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  143. Hi JP: You wrote: Precisely. As you put it, none of the above is much of an explanation. The difference however is that the dualist view appears to be stuck at the “somehow” stage while the materialist understanding of consciousness increases day by day.

    This might be where we are talking past each other. I don't see how the materialist understanding of consciousness has increased at all. Certainly we understand how the brain works better and better, and we understand quite a bit about how brain changes effect memory, perception, the ability to process information. But I do not see anything that suggests that consciousness itself is CAUSED by matter being arranged in a certain way--nor can I even imagine any experiments that could indicate any such thing. That zombies are logically possible shows that there's nothing in the CONCEPT of consciousness that implies consciousness is a physical thing, and since (it seems to me anyway) every experiment I've heard is totally consistent with the idea that consciousness is some kind of immaterial thing that works through matter, I don't see a reason to think materialism is even true, much less that it provides us with an increasing understanding of consciousness.

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  144. Hi Bernard,

    You write: “Yes, all arguments begin by assuming something is possible or impossible.

    Actually arguments normally start by assuming that a premise is true (or conversely not true). The zombie argument starts with a particularly weak premise, namely that something is logically possible. And as I have argued before, claims of mere possibility must be accepted as true unless one can suggest some grounds for suspecting they aren’t. Don’t you agree with that epistemic principle, and if not why not? Incidentally, here is how David Chalmers puts it: “If no reasonable analysis of the terms in question points toward a contradiction, or even makes the existence of a contradiction plausible, then there is a natural assumption in favor of logical possibility.

    Now, the zombie argument stats with the assumption zombies are possible.

    Starts with the assumption that it is possible for zombies to exist in a different world than ours, with a kind of matter that is different than ours.

    But note, this is the same as starting with the assumption that the materialist stance, that by definition consciousness is just a physical arrangement (and so zombies are logically impossible), is wrong.

    Materialism is a hypothesis about our world, not about how things stand in a different world than ours. Therefore no claim about a different world than ours can possibly contradict materialism. Not to mention that materialism is entirely true for the zombie world, for by definition only physical things exist there.

    Incidentally, materialism is not the hypothesis that consciousness is just a physical arrangement; that’s only something that may be the case if materialism is true. Materialism is the hypothesis that everything that exists in reality (i.e. in our world) is ultimately of a physical nature. Or, better, that everything that exists in reality can ultimately be explained using only physical concepts.

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  145. Hi JP,

    You write: “The difference however is that the dualist view appears to be stuck at the “somehow” stage while the materialist understanding of consciousness increases day by day.

    That the materialist understanding of consciousness increases day by day – is a demonstrably false claim. After all there are still philosophers (whose job is to keep tabs on such issues) who find the problem of how to fit consciousness within a materialistic understanding of reality to be so hard, that they defend the thesis that we simply lack the intelligence to solve it. Others go even farther and suggest (against all reason it seems to me) that consciousness does not really exist but is some kind of illusion. Such wouldn’t be the case if it were true that “the materialist understanding of consciousness increases day by day”.

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  146. Hi Dianelos

    Still you don't address the point. Leaving aside how one wants to define materialism, by one live hypothesis consciousness just is, by definition, an arrangement of matter. And, the zombie argument has nothing to say about this hypothesis, except to dismiss it in its very assumption.

    To repeat, I fully understand the principles of logic you are promoting. You are just conveniently leaving out the last step. A conclusion of an argument can never exceed the warrant granted by its starting assumptions. So, I may say, 'given the axioms of Euclidean geometry, the following is true..' Equally, I might say 'Given consciousness is not, by definition, just an arrangement of matter...' and proceed to construct any old number of arguments based on this assumption. What such an argument can not show, however, is that the assumption itself is valid.

    You wish to use an alternative principle, that we assume something is possible unless we have a reason to believe otherwise. The trouble here is, depending upon how you frame the initial statement, we can create two contradictory possibilities, and must choose between them (It is possible there are zombies, or it is possible consciousness just is an arrangement of matter, by definition). Af the first is possible, the second is impossible, and vice versa. So the principle you advocate is of no use in this situation.

    Bernard

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  147. Hi Keith

    Your claim that there's nothing in the concept of consciousness that presupposes it is physical rather prejudges the debate. I understand this is what your intuition tells you (that zombies are logically possible) but my intuition tells me they will turn out to be logically impossible, once we understand what we mean by consciousness. This habit of claiming for one's own intuitions some sort of law like status rather makes a mockery of discussions such as this, doesn't it?

    Bernard

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  148. Hi Keith,

    Understanding something includes understanding how it interacts with other things and what role it plays in a larger context. Isn't current research shedding light on these aspects of consciousness? The more we know about the brain, the more we will know about the role of consciousness and how it interacts with various brain systems. And, from a dualist point of view, it might end up specifying precisely what kind of interface the elusive immaterial consciousness must have with the physical brain to end up with a functioning whole. At this point, depending on this interface, the dualist position may well become very difficult to maintain (or, to be fair, it might become more attractive – nobody knows yet).

    This sort of roundabout or indirect approach to difficult problems is nothing new: attacking simpler issues first and with time, hopefully, zeroing in on the Big Prize, if you wish. You may be impatient with such a strategy but to dismiss it all as irrelevant is, frankly, very difficult to understand.

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  149. (reposted)

    Hi Bernard,

    You write: “Leaving aside how one wants to define materialism, by one live hypothesis consciousness just is, by definition, an arrangement of matter.

    I don’t think it is reasonable to redefine consciousness as an arrangement of matter. It seems to me that many arguments nowadays start by explicitly redefining common words. I don’t think that’s reasonable, for it can only lead to confusion.[1] If for the purposes of the thought one wishes to convey the usual sense of a word is not suitable then by all means coin another word. As for “consciousness” a normal 10-year old already knows what that word means, for she understands that even though when she hits her toy drums or her baby brother they both produce a lot of noise there is a fundamental difference between the two, in that her drums are not a conscious being and her baby brother is. What we mean by consciousness is the capacity of having experiences, such as pain which causes the baby brother to cry.

    Thus it is a plain fact that consciousness is *not* an arrangement of matter, because nobody (and I mean nobody including those materialists who argue that consciousness is just an arrangement of matter) really means “an arrangement of matter” when they speak of “consciousness”. The hypothesis that I find reasonable is that what we mean by consciousness (namely the capacity of having experiences) is a property of a particular arrangement of matter. In other words, the hypothesis is that some arrangements of matter, just on account of that material arrangement, have the capacity of conscious experience and are thus conscious beings.

    [continued next]

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  150. [continued from above]

    And, the zombie argument has nothing to say about this hypothesis, except to dismiss it in its very assumption.

    As I said before, the zombie argument’s premise is logically compatible with this hypothesis being true in reality, so it does not dismiss it. Indeed the conclusion of the zombie argument does not deny this hypothesis.

    Consider the propositions:

    Z= “The existence of a different world than ours, with matter different than ours, such that no arrangement of that matter has the property of consciousness, is possible (in the sense of entailing no logical contradiction).”

    M=”In reality (i.e. in our world) particular arrangements of matter have the property of consciousness”.

    Z is the premise of the zombie argument. M is the materialistic hypothesis about what consciousness is in reality (our world). Don’t you agree that both Z and M are logically compatible, i.e. that both can be true at the same time? If you do agree then Z does not “dismiss” M. If you don’t agree, I’d like to know why not.

    [1] I have an almost 7 years old daughter to whom I sometimes teach math. So I tell her something my father also had told me, namely to always write her numbers very neatly, because just writing neatly helps avoid mistakes. This trick really works by the way. Similarly, I say, when one thinks or argues it is very important to be neat with the meaning of the words one uses. Being vague about their meaning, or, worse, playing fast and loose with their meaning, is a bad idea.

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  151. Hi Dianelos

    Yes, absolutely, accuracy of meaning is the whole game, and we must proceed with utmost caution.

    So, what do we mean when we speak of consciousness? Well, something rather vague, as it turns out. Something to do with our experience of the world. But not exactly in the way we report this experience, for our reportage of what we are conscious of often appears to be, upon examination, quite wrong (we report having colour perception in our peripheral visions, yet cannot name any of the colours represented there, for example).

    So, the questions, how does consciousness manifest? and what is consciousness? are closely intertwined. The assertion that even a child knows what we mean by consciousness is exactly the kind of loose speaking you warn against.

    One possibility, strongly promoted by a number of thinkers in this area, is that consciousness just is a particular arrangement of matter. Whether this turns out to be correct or not, time may tell. As JP points out, as we collect better information on the ways various physical states correlate with various shades of consciousness, we'll be in a better position to judge this.

    Meanwhile, your attempt to prejudge it and define consciousness for your own purposes rather undermines your claim that this is somehow a logical construction. Actually, you are taking your pre-existing prejudice on the matter and dressing it up as an argument.

    This has a close analogy to your approach to free will. There's nothing wrong with doing this. I'd just ask you to own it, instead of pretending you have discovered some compelling philosophical argument in theism's favour. In the end, what we do here is construct stories, and admitting this allows us to pay due respect to the stories of others.

    Bernard

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  152. Hi Dianelos

    Rereading I see I haven't clearly addressed your M,Z point. M is not the only way of framing a materialist take on consciousness. An alternative to M is that, in reality, consciousness is a logically necessary quality of certain arrangements of matter (as curvature is a logically necessary quality of a locus of points equidistant from a given centre). In this case Z and M contradict, insomuch as M makes Z logically impossible.

    It is this M (the view proposed by Dennett for example) that must be dismissed in advance before the zombie argument can establish anything. All I am arguing is that we, as yet, have insufficient information about the relationship between matter and consciousness to effect this dismissal.

    Hence, our choice is maintain an open mind on this and keep up the research, or to base our dismissal upon pre-existing prejudice. Personally, the second option is not to my taste. If it is to yours, so be it, but there is nothing unreasonable about resisting this temptation I don't think.

    Bernard

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  153. Hi Bernard: I am wondering if we are reaching the end of this discussion, as we seem to be talking past each other. For what it's worth, let me tell you how I see what Dianelos is claiming. You suggest that what we mean by the word "consciousness" is vague. Apparently so since some of y'all seem (to me at least) to be using the word so that by definition it refers to a set of behaviors and or physical states of matter and Dianelos define to refer to our inner sense of awareness. But I'd say that according to Dianelos and I, there is nothing vague at all about the experience, whether or not we can articulate it clearly--we experience awareness, we intimately know what that experience is even if we do not know what causes it. That experience is not conceptually the same thing as brain states or brain behaviors, so it cannot be true that this experience is by definition a physical phenomenon.

    And for me, I still do not see any kind of experiment that could properly lead one to conclude that in fact consciousness is a product of brain states, that consciousness is a physical phenomenon. That doesn't mean neuroscience isn't useful, it doesn't mean we cannot learn a whole lot about how brain chnages can affect our experience of consciousness. But I cannot see how neuroscience could possibly address the dualism/physicalism question. To me it doesn't seem to me that neuroscience is even about that kind of thing.

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  154. Hi Bernard,

    You write: “An alternative to M is that, in reality, consciousness is a logically necessary quality of certain arrangements of matter (as [circular] curvature is a logically necessary quality of a locus of points equidistant from a given centre). In this case Z and M contradict, insomuch as M makes Z logically impossible.

    Right. Thanks for the clarification.

    Mi first thought is that whereas in mathematical objects all qualities are logically necessary, the same is never the case with physical objects where no qualities are logically necessary. That’s why philosophers say that the physical world is contingent. To suggest then that, against the general rule that no property of physical objects is logically necessary, consciousness is, represents a case of special pleading. Special pleading is generally considered unsound thinking. (Indeed the case at hand strikes me as an example of the unfortunate tendency of naturalistic thought to blur the meaning of words: physical objects are in fact quite unlike mathematical object but in order to make a point let’s blur that distinction and claim that they kind of are alike after all). Anyway, let’s overlook this issue.

    I have previously argued that a circle is defined using terms as center and equidistance whereas consciousness is not defined as an arrangement of matter. I now see that criticism of mine may have been too strong. After all people living before the dawn of mathematics may have had a clear notion of the concept of “circle”, meaning something like “a figure which is equally round, all around”. It was only later that it was found that circles can be produced by moving a point equidistantly around some center. It is still true that one who understands what “circle” means will easily see that circles can be produced by moving a point equidistantly around a center, whereas the idea that consciousness is produced by some arrangement of matter is extremely difficult to conceptualize, even as a mere hypothesis. But let’s ignore this point too; perhaps our powers of conceptualization are very variable or not at all reliable.

    Let me then bite your round bullet and see where it leads us. You are saying that as it is the case that a circle is a logical necessity of being all points equidistant from a center, perhaps consciousness too is a logical necessity of a particular arrangement of matter. That thought has some value when applied to reality (i.e. to our world), but can it carry to other possible worlds too? For example consider a possible world where distance changes with direction. In such a world all points equidistant to a center may well be a square. So it’s not the case that if in our world the set of all points equidistant to a center produce (or if you prefer “are”) a circle, one can’t assume the possibility of a world in which the set of all points equidistant to a center do not produce (or “are not”) a circle is impossible, given that in that world equidistance is different than in ours. Exactly analogously, it’s not the case that if in our world a particular arrangement of matter produces (or if you prefer “is”) consciousness, one can’t assume the possibility of a world in which that arrangement of matter does not produce (or “is not”) consciousness, given that in that world matter is different than in ours.

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  155. Hi Bernard,

    I tried no less than five times to post in this thread without any luck. If you wish you may send me an email and I´ll send you that post privately.

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  156. Hi Keith

    I absolutely agree that this is at the heart of the dispute. How do we conceptualise consciousness, in essence from what perspective do we choose to view it?

    It is important, perhaps, to note once more that I am not actually pushing one such perspective over the other. I say, until we have better information, let's remain agnostic. We don't yet know enough about the underpinnings of the physical/consciousness correlation to judge whether or not your instinct or mine is better on this. Humility then demands that we keep an open mind.

    I entirely accept you can not imagine how science could resolve this. That this failure of imagination is itself a guarantee that somebody won't find a way is a big call however, and one that the history of science warns against.

    That we do not instinctively describe our experience of consciousness (to others and to ourselves) as a mere physical phenomenon may say as much about our instincts as it does about our consciousness. Again, why prejudge this?

    The life analogy is a good one. There was a time when people refused to accept life might just be a particular arrangement of matter, and its resulting behaviours. No, that's not what I mean when I say life, came the retort. I speak not of its behaviours, I speak of its essence. A direct equivalent zombie argument can therefore be constructed to show life is not a material phenomenon.

    That we find this argument unconvincing is a function of the things our biological investigations revealed. Once the various behaviours are deconstructed and causally explained, most were happy to accept there was nothing much left to explain. Our definitions shifted. Those who considered science could never explain life's essence by in large withdrew their claim that such an essence even existed.

    This may turn out to be true for consciousness too. Or it may not. But why bet against it, when there are investigations left to carry out? That feels defeatist to me.

    Bernard

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  157. Hi Bernard: Regarding my failure of imagination, perhaps someone with more imagination (say perhaps a novelist I might know:-) could offer a possible experiment that would address the dualist/physicalist question?

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  158. Hi Keith

    As I've done my best to explain, it's not about devising an experiment of the type you seek. Science doesn't work that way. After all, there was no single crucial experiment that moved people away from the essence of life hypothesis. Rather, as the chemistry of life became better understood, the gap left for the essence diminished to the point that most felt confortable letting it go, although the move never became a compulsory one, models are at best suggestive. There was always still room for people to say, 'you've explained the correlation, but not necessarily the cause.' At some point, to most people, this just began to feel a little silly, because the putative mystery that fueled the objection had faded.

    So, if we ask, do we have a better handle on aspects of consciousness now than we did a hundred years ago, the answer is surely yes. Will it ever be good enough to silence the 'but that's not causal' objection? Only time will tell. It may be worth restressing that this causal objection is in no way unique to consciousenss. It applies to every correlation we observe in the physical world.

    I would thus claim conscoiousness may one day be explained as physical in the way rain is. And of course, there is no scientific experiment that can prove rain is not actually brought about at the whim of the Gods, with the correlation with physical phenomenon being sheer coincidence.

    My question remains. What makes you confident consciousness will not yield its secrets in the way life did? Is it just intellectual pessimism or do you think you've found a reason to show it can't be done? It seems to me all the objections you raise once also applied to the question of life.

    Bernard

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  159. Hi Bernard: I certainly have no problem with the idea that changes to the brain can cause changes to how we experience things, how we remember things, how we process information and such. If I were a brain scientist my belief that consciousness is more than just brain chemistry would not interfere with doing research. The reason I've been asking for an experiment that would address the dualism/physicalism debate is because as far as I can see everybody else suffers from the same lack of imagination wrt to such questions as I do. Physicalists take it for granted that everything is physical, therefore so is consciousness, they take it for granted that because brain damage can alter a person's personality therefore consciousness IS a brain function. I don't see how those kinds of facts lead to that kind of conclusion, and as far as I can see they DON'T lead to that kind of conclusion. I wasn't asking for the one and only experiment that would prove the physicalist view, I was just asking for a description of the kinds of experiments that push in the physicalist direction. You take the agnostic view--maybe someday science will provide convincing reasons to see consciousness as physical. On the other hand, maybe science will someday provide convincing reasons to see George Bush as the source of the Northern Lights. But I am not expecting such:-)

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  160. Hi Keith

    And this is different from the question of life how?

    Bernard

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  161. Hi, Keith-

    If I could add acomment.. your argument (a few posts back) presupposes that conscious experience is immaterial, so it is little wonder that no other view could make a dent, however much evidence arrives.

    Suppose that variations in conscious experience closely correlate with physical manipulations. Drugs can cause the whole gamut of lowered, deranged, or lost consciousness. Magnetic fields, ditto. Strikes to the head, ditto. Alterations in blood flow, ditto. Surgeries like lobatomies, ditto. The list is endless.

    Suppose then that you say that some unknown mechanism and unknown source still might provide consciousness (or some central portion thereof) from a non-physical, outside or non-local source, which you don't know anything about, but theorize due to your inability to conceptually join a physical cause that all these physical correlations support, with the mental experience you regard as ... immaterial.

    What is left to be said? One can spin metaphysics all day long and till one is blue in the face (and has lost consciousness). But empirical engagement is needed. On your side, it is imperative to figure out how the supposed something-out-there connects with the brain and our thoughts. On the naturalist side, it is imperative to figure out what about the brain physically generates consciousness, from the many neurobiological ingredients already known.

    My sense is that the latter quest has not long to run- a few decades at most. The brain-mind correlations will improve further, to the point that consciousness can be manufactured and filled at will with new materials (both existing subjective consciousness, and also new and self-reporting consciousnesses). At some point along this line, doubts about its physical basis would decline further, as is common with preponderance of the evidence arguments.

    On the other hand, the former quest has not even begun, aside from a great deal of armchair philosophizing. There is no plausible place to start, no connection to reliable theories of how the world works, no link to reality as it exists, but only the bare claim that unreality (supernaturalism) exists. We shall see, and perhaps conclude our discussion some years down the road.

    I have little problem with proposals of unknown mysteries surrounding the origin of the universe.. we honestly don't know much about it, and may not ever know fully. But the brain? That is a much different matter- open to investigation, heavily investigated, yielding up its secrets bit by bit, and consistent so far with only mechanistic theories.

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  162. Hi Keith

    And, a last point, yes, I would happily propose a scientific investigation into the Bush/Northern lights link, just so long as we had some good correlation evidence to start with. Let's say, the only time northern lights were ever seen was when Dubya clapped his hands. Every time he claps, we see the lights, and no other time. Wouldn't that at least give you pause to wonder whether there might be more to this connection than coincidence? It would me. I'd certainly think it warranted further investigation. And the consciousness/brain state correlation is a bit like that isn't it?

    Bernard

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  163. Hi Bernard: Life, you ask. I am not particularly well read, so forgive me if I am guessing here. I supose that the ancient 'life force" notion was motivated by something like this: living things behave very differently from inanimate matter, and it sure looks like there is some kind of "life force" that animates the material of the body, a force that leaves when the living thing dies. Modern science has dispensed with the life force idea because we better understand the mechanisms that govern that that behavior we associate with life.

    If I'm right about that, still, we are talking about how matter behaves. This is a different thing from consciousness because the CONCEPT of consciousness is different from the concept of the kinds of behaviors we ASSOCIATE with consciousness. Consciousness is AWARENESS, not behavior. It seems to me easy to understand how IN PRINCIPLE complex arrangements of matter could produce complex behaviors. I see no way for complex arrangements of matter to produce awareness, nor do i see any way TO see how. That's why I was asking for some kind of hypothetical experiments that would address the issue.

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  164. Hi Burk: I hope my short response doesn't ignore too much of your longer comment. I don't think i DID presuppose that consciousness isn't physical. I DID claim (and argue, even) that the CONCEPT of consciousness (the concept of awareness)is different from the CONCEPT of physical phenomenon but I didn't presuppose that consciousness isn't produced by something physical. I simply said I didn't see how unconscious matter could (by virtue of how it is arranged) become aware, and i couldn't imagine any kind of hypothetical experiment that would point in that direction. In fact, I asked y'all to suggest such hypothetical experiments. I still request that.

    But if you think that question misses some point, then maybe we've reached the end of the discussion. If so, I appreciate your taking the time.

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  165. Hi Keith,

    I have just a few moments – hope to get back to this discussion in a day or two.

    It could have been argued (as you do with consciousness) that the concept of life was not about matter or behaviour but about something clearly not physical, no? We may look at this as somewhat silly because we’re used to the idea that life is reducible to physics but it might have seemed plausible then.

    Not that this idea of “life force” (or energy) is really gone. It’s still part of popular culture at many levels, I would say, from New Age to (sigh) Star Trek.

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  166. Hi Keith

    Yes, I do see that to you there is a conceptual difference between physical organisation and awareness, as you put it.

    But consider how it might have seemed before Darwin. Life, for some, was just conceptually different from physical organisation. Witness the complexity of the ant colony, the fact that an acorn somehow knows to grow into an oak, the intricate relationship between the fig and its wasps... Everywhere people looked they saw purpose, knowledge, and design; all quite conceptually different from the properties of mere matter.

    And so, precisely the argument you give against consciousness being reduced to physics, a conceptual difference, a lack of any idea how to proceed experimentally, could have been rallied in favour of the irreducible mystery of life.

    That argument, it turned out, was misdirected then. Shouldn't we at least acknowledge the possibility it may be misdirected again?

    Bernard

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  167. Hi Bernard: Sorry I haven't been able to respond, my life has been quite busy lately. And thanks again for the discussion. Here's what I have to say about life-force:

    Depending on what you mean by the concept of life, I'd say that I agree with your point that the "life-forcist" could hold that the concept of life is distinct from the behaviors associated with life. And depending on what you mean by the concept of life, I'd claim that modern biology doesn't account for it. I'd even further claim(perhaps "claim" is too strong a word) that life so defined is part of why I believe in God. Because a lot of what seems like an indication of life is actually an indication of consciousness and I believe that consciousness is better understood in the context of theism than physicalism (this is of course the very topic of our conversation). But taking consciousness off the table (consider non-sentient plants for example), it seems to me that life in that sense IS the behavior. I cannot even form the concept of a living plant that doesn't do any of the things that we associate with life. I cannot form the concept of a non-sentient rock actually being alive even though it doesn't display any of the inner or outer behaviors of life. This seems very different from conscious awareness. I CAN form the concept of a rock that is sentient, that has an inner mental life that we simply do not see. That's a big difference it seems to me.

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  168. Hi Keith,

    I don't think an experiment can provide absolute proof that consciousness is reducible to physics. But no amount of observation or experiment can prove that the young Earth creationists are wrong either, to the extent that they can always say that God could have made the Earth look old for his own mysterious reasons, or whatever it is they say. It is always possible to construct an hypothesis in such a way that it cannot be falsified.

    Now the case of consciousness is not solved yet and we can't tell in advance what the end result will be. Bernard gives a good account of what we can expect from the research in a comment above (from the 15th). Let me comment on another aspect of this.

    Under the dualist point of view, there exists some non-physical entity (NPE) interacting with the physical brain. The question is this: what functions it reasonable to attribute to this NPE? I would expect that the more we know about the physical brain, the smaller will be the set of these functions (the question is whether it will ever become empty). Take memory. I believe it's quite clear that memories are stored in the physical brain: destroy some particular part of the brain and some memories are gone; stimulate another and a long forgotten memory resurfaces; and so on. It seems unreasonable then to attribute any kind of memory to the NPE itself.

    Which raises the question: if the “self” resides somehow in the NPE, how good is it without a memory of its own? In a real sense, without memories, we don't exist at all.

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  169. Hi Keith,

    Remember our discussion of Absolute Moral Facts?

    Just read an interesting paper on this topic:
    Morality is a Culturally Conditioned Response
    . Makes a lot of sense to me.

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  170. Hi Keith

    Exactly so. This comes down to an issue of imagination for you. Now that you understand how chemistry creates the behaviours of life, you are able to make the imaginative leap of describing life in terms of chemistry. But before we had a good grasp of evolution, DNA etc, many found this leap impossible (they saw design, purpose, etc and considered them conceptually different).

    You now find the leap from consciousness to chemistry impossible. I absolutely accept this leap is beyond your imagination. Fair enough. But that you can not make the leap is to my mind a very poor reason to believe such an explanation will never be forthcoming. Those who could not make the leap pre-Darwin drew exactly the same conclusions, and it turned out they were quite wrong.

    So, I accept that to you consciousness and physical action are conceptually different. But this is not the same as establishing that this difference has any serious grounding beyond your personal hunch (which once again is quite the opposite from mine). Rather than say, 'my hunch is right, Keith's is wrong' I prefer to say 'let's keep accumulating evidence, exactly as we did with the life problem, and see if a Darwinian style revolution in our thinking doesn't occur.'

    I don't believe you have any grounds for prioritising your hunch of conceptual difference, over mine, which is essentially one of difference in perspectives. You can of course keep repeating 'but they're just different concepts', but repetition of itself is not an argument. How, I wonder, could you go about establishing this essential difference?

    Bernard

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  171. Hi Bernard: I think there is a big difference between thinking that the behavior we associate with life couldn't be reduced to chemistry and thinking the inner experience of awareness couldn't be. The former is more like what Michael Behe says is the "irreducible complexity" of life that he claims makes unguided evolution impossible. He cannot imagine any plausible evolutionary pathways from A to Z for certain biological structures, but it's not that he doesn't see how natural selection could bring about biological changes at all.

    This is different from conscious awareness in that I cannot see how the way matter is arranged has anything to DO with bringing our awareness into existance. Certainly the way our brains are arranged affects our conscious experience, but that's a separate issue.

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  172. Hi JP: There seems to me to be a difference between Young Earth Creationism and my POV. The hypothetical Young Earther you allude to says "appearances are deceiving, the world LOOKS billions of years old but we have facts scientists aren't using, we have God's Word that tells us the Earth is much younger".

    On the other hand, I claim that consciousness doesn't LOOK like it comes from the physical. It does appear that the condition of our brain affects quite profoundly our experience of awareness, but it doesn't look at all (at least not to me) that our consciousness IS a physical phenomenon.

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  173. Hi Keith,

    I agree that the experience of consciousness doesn't look like your ordinary physical phenomenon. The question is: how much can we conclude from this? This is where we differ. You seem to deduce much more from our subjective experience than I think is warranted while I believe we need to wait until we know more about the physical aspects of consciousness. Then, hopefully, we'll be able to tell whether a non-physical entity is needed or not.

    Now, you ask for an experiment that would disprove the non-physicality of consciousness hypothesis (NPC) and say it can't be done.

    By saying that no experiment can ever settle the question, you are implying (or expecting) that a complete physical explanation of consciousness is forthcoming. I would rather expect that if the NPC hypothesis is true, something will come up in the research to indicate it. To expect a complete explanation of consciousness in physical terms while maintaining that NPC is true seems contradictory.

    If the explanation is complete, what more do we need? If not, if a significant gap remains and cannot be explained – then you might have some evidence for NPC.

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  174. Hi Keith

    Yes, I can see that you think there's a big difference between the life and the consciousness issues, but you establish this only by helping yourself to our modern understanding of biochemistry. Prior to this understanding, the argument you make against physical consciousness is exactly the same in form as could have been employed against life.

    Not sure why you're avoiding addressing this point. I'll try this one more time. What's the difference?

    Bernard

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  175. hi JP: I don't quite follow. You wrote: By saying that no experiment can ever settle the question, you are implying (or expecting) that a complete physical explanation of consciousness is forthcoming. I would rather expect that if the NPC hypothesis is true, something will come up in the research to indicate it. To expect a complete explanation of consciousness in physical terms while maintaining that NPC is true seems contradictory.

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  176. Hi Bernard: I don't see how I am taking advantage of our knowledge of biochemisty. All I am doing is assuming that a plant (for example) is made of matter and that as such one could conceive of that matter behaving the way it does because of physical laws. I also don't see that I am avoiding your point (I am definitely not trying to). For me it comes down to this:

    1. For a non-sentient plant, I don't know what it would even MEAN for the plant to be alive but not display any of the behaviors associated with life. I take this to indicate that those behaviors are essential to the concept of non-sentient life.

    2. On the other hand, I can easily conceive of something (say a rock, or an immaterial ghost) being consciously aware while not actually displaying any of the behaviors associated with conscious awareness. I take this to mean that those behaviors are NOT essential to the concept of conscious awareness.

    Based on (1) I can see science could give us a reason to think that non-sentient life would be physical. That doesn't apply to (2). as far as I can see.

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  177. Hi Keith,

    You're saying that no experiment can prove or disprove the NPC hypothesis. I assume you also mean that no amount of knowledge about the brain will be able to achieve this either.

    Now, I would think that brain research will either provide a complete and satisfactory account of consciousness or will fail to do so. It it fails because some little piece of the puzzle is missing, after all has been tried and all possibilities explored, wouldn't you take this as some evidence in favour of NPC?

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  178. Hi Keith,

    Concerning the question of life, I believe the vitalists of old considered there were two types of matter, organic and inorganic, and that organic matter could not be “reduced” or produced by the inorganic – something of the kind, I am no expert here. But the analogy with consciousness seems clear.

    Not that their position didn't make sense. Mayr (the biologist) comments that The logic of the critique of the vitalists was impeccable. They simply didn't know enough.

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  179. Hi, Keith-

    Let me take one more stab here. One issue is to define what we mean by consciousness sufficiently so that an experiment can be done. Consider every possible attribute of consciousness... (my list)

    - has contents; memories, sensations, spontaneous thoughts arising, willed calculations, etc.
    - feels flowing and continuous
    - feels coherent, unifying at various times many sensory and other contents
    - feels like "me", with idiosyncratic emotions and desires
    etc. and so on, as you wish ...

    Now consider whether any one of those attributes can be affected by physical manipulation. The contents are derived from our physical world, prior experiences in it, and from the substantially more mysterious unconscious that is such a creative wellspring. At any rate, each of these can be manipulated by outside this-world means, like LSD, novels & social cues that call up archetypal feelings, etc. Visual experience can be dramatically changed by excising certain parts of the brain. Memories can likewise be shut off, capgras syndrome arises from lesions that destroy our emotional connection to faces, etc.

    The coherence of consciousness can be graded, and is strongly affected by disorders like schizophrenia, and lesions. Same thing with emotions and "me"-ness. There are lesions that cause the person to think they are actually dead (cotard), or are someone else, or have alien hands, etc.

    My point is that the closer you look and the better you define what you are talking about, the less you can just blanket the problem with .. can't be mechanistic. All aspects of the consciousness problem are already firmly established to be of a physical origin, really, as far as I am concerned. All have graded aspects rather than binary aspects. All can be disrupted by mechanistic means. All are logically closed in terms of never acquiring/presenting information not physically available to the person.

    All we have left to do is to connect the dots and figure out how the brain does the connecting magic an ongoing basis. The mutations, as it were, are already in hand, as was true in genetics in the early 20th century. What is left is to knit them together into a full theory supported by the "DNA" of the brain- just how those brain waves of neural signalling, such as gamma waves, knit together the various contents/engrams into a more or less flowing stream.

    Conversely, one may ask whether any of these syndromes, maladies, or experiences are assignable to problems with the supernatural half of the equation. These days, only positive experiences seem to be casually assigned to supernatural influences, with most psychopathology more or less reluctantly given over to physical causes. Would you agree with that? And for positive experiences, what of the fact that they can be reliably induced by ayahuasca and similar hallucinogens? Or by temporal lobe epilepsy? Here too, the mutations are in hand.

    But if you have a characteristic which you think is uniquely supernatural in its origin/nature, that would be a worthy focus of further research.

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  180. Hi Keith

    I suppose I'm asking you why the following argument is wrong:

    'There must be more to life than simply physical interaction. If life is simply matter, how on earth does an acorn turn itself into an oak tree? We do not see rocks or rivers undergoing such remarkable transformations. Although it is made of matter, the acorn must possess something more, some mysterious knowledge of its place in the natural plan, in order to fulfill its task. I can not even conceive of how matter alone can achieve this. Therefore the essence of life is immaterial'

    This argument is wrong, but without knowledge of biochemistry, how can we show it is wrong? It appears, to me at least, to take the same form as the argument you are making.

    This notion of being able to conceive of a rock being conscious without it having any physical thinking apparatus is like me arguing that speed has nothing to do with displacement, as I can imagine something having speed despite not moving. When pushed on what I mean by this, I will be very vague about the mechanisms, but rest assured, I can imagine it, at least in some very vague sense. Does this argument suffice to show speed and displacement are independent concepts, or does it once again point to the weaknes sof the zombie argument form?

    Bernard

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  181. Hi JP: Supposing the ancients believed that organic matter was different from inorganic matter, when chemistry showed that the atoms were carbon and such--the same as inorganic matter--that would have falsified the ancients view it seems to me. How could anything do the same for the quality of awareness?

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  182. Hi Bernard: I do not see how you can imagine speed without something there to move. It kind of seems like one of those zen koans--sound of one hand clapping or something. If you can imagine such then it seems to me you must be referring to something different from when I use the word. Perhaps the same is true for the phrase "conscious awareness".

    The hypothetical argument your your hypothetical"life forcist" makes seems to be built on the premise that matter following the laws of physics COULDN'T produce anything so complex as the behaviors we associate with life. All it takes to rebut such an argument is to show HOW such complex behaviors could come from matter following the laws of physics. But still the issue is about behavior. This seems to me to be something totally different from the different CONCEPTS of awareness and behavior. Not being able to see how matter could be alive with only the laws of physics seems to me to be like not seeing how an electronic box could accurately calculate the cube root of 198736. Not seeing how matter organized in a certain way could produce awareness seems like not seeing how walking could be a ham sandwich.

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  183. Hi Keith

    I agree. But, to those without the benefit of modern biochemistry, asking how life could be matter was like asking how walking could be a ham sandwich. All that changed was we accumulated more information that showed the concepts were not different after all.

    You seem to me to be arguing that in the case of consciousness such an accumulation of knowledge will be impossible. Why?

    I agree, there is something contradictory about imagining speed that doesn't involve movement. I suspect there is something just as contradictory about imagining a conscious being without some form of brain. All you offer against this is a feeling that it isn't so. But feelings are often wrong. To repeat, why should your feeling have priority over mine in this matter? I don't understand your reasoning at all here.

    Bernard

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  184. Hi Keith

    Sorry, an extra thought. I have been puzzling over what is at issue here.

    If I am right, this comes down to your opening premise, that consciousness is conceptually different from physical activity, and hence can't be equivalent to it. My counter claim then has nothing to do with the argument you construct upon that premise, I just think the premise may be unsound. Specifically, I think it remains possible they may turn out to be different concepts, but I don't think we have any grounds for assuming this in advance of the evidence.

    So I am drawn to attempting to understand the grounds you offer. I think you have at various times proposed three:
    You can't imagine how physical arrangements could of themselves produce awareness. This just seems incredible to you.
    You can imagine consciousness existing independently of any thinking device, e.g a conscious rock.
    You can imagine an object that exhibits brain behaviour, but has no consciousness, a zombie.

    I find none of these compelling. The first is too like the life question. At various points in history, people were unable to imagine how inorganic matter could produce life. This failure of imagination signalled nothing important about the underlying relationships that were eventually uncovered. (I am unable to imagine how a computer allows me to Skype, it doesn't mean it can't do it).

    The second and third are question begging. If indeed consciousness just is matter arranged in a particular way (or the resulting process) then you are imagining impossible things, like my imagining of speed without displacement, or an equidistant locus yielding a triangle. Without establishing in advance whether consciousness is material, we can not say whether these imaginings are logically possible, and hence relevant.

    Your argument therefore reduces, as far as I can see, to the a priori assumption that consciousness is not material, which in turn bolsters your intuition, which in turn is used to justify your assumption. And this process leaves open the possibility that the opposite assumption is the correct one, hence my advocating a wait and see approach.

    What am I missing?

    Bernard

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  185. Hi Bernard:

    1. I want to address the "feelings" issue first. I claim that there is a big and relevant difference between (a) a set of behaviors that seem too complex to be accounted for by the same laws of physics that govern the usual laws of physics and (b) the inner experience of awareness. You disagree. What other than your feelings (or judgment or intuition) do you have to support your view? It seems to me that in the end we all make those kinds of subjective judgments that might be wrong but still we are within our epistemic rights to make them. That's all I think I've been doing.

    2. About conceptual differences, I don't agree with you that anyone previously thought the concept of life was distinct from the concept of matter following the laws of physics but science showed it wasn't. If a person saw the turning of an acorn into an oak as a different concept from matter following physics, then the idea they were thinking back then of didn't change when they became convinced that physics accounted for the behaviors of life. They just saw how those complex behaviors could be just physics.

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  186. You might all enjoy a consciousness graphic...

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  187. Hi Keith

    Exactly. What we have is two different subjective starting points, neither of which is as yet confirmed by any evidence. Hence, the reasonable stance is the agnostic one. The alternative is to claim one unsupported viewpoint has primacy over the other, despite not a scrap of evidence in its favour. That strikes me as unacceptably arrogant.

    As of the conceptual difference, I'm not sure what you mean by this any more, following your acorn response. You may need to clarify what you mean when you say things are conceptually different.

    Bernard

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  188. Guys,

    I apologize for jumping in here at the end, but I did take the time to post some thoughts regarding this whole discussion on my own blog:http://byzantinedream.blogspot.com/
    I am not trying to hijack the conversation away from this blog. Feel free to come back here to respond if you wish. I just had too much I wanted to post for the comment section. There is also an interesting book review I note that might shed some light.

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  189. Hi Bernard: You wrote: Exactly. What we have is two different subjective starting points, neither of which is as yet confirmed by any evidence.

    I think you are not exactly addressing the thing I said. I claimed there is a relevant difference between "life forcism" and "dualism" so that your "life force" objection to my stance doesn't quite work. You claim the two ideas are relevantly similar so the so that your objection does work. What (other than your own subjective judgment) justifies your position?

    Also, I disagree with you that given our state of knowledge about consciousness the only reasonable position to take is agnosticism wrt dualism/physicalism (that is, unless agnosticism allows for the view that maybe I don't know but it is reasonable for me to assume that dualism is right). What (other than your subjective judgment) justifies your position wrt reasonableness on the dualism/physicalism debate?

    I claim that in both cases your stance is based entirely on your subjective judgment about consciousness and about reasonableness. And I claim there's nothing wrong with exercising subjective judgment. I also claim that I am similarly exercising my own subjective judgment when I see physicalism is very implausible.

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  190. Hi Keith,
     
    The point of the comparison of the issue of consciousness with the issue of life is not that they are identical as such (or even very similar). It is rather that the supporters of the idea of life force in the past may have believed at the time to have impeccable logic and unanswerable arguments to defend their position. To this extent, the analogy holds.
     
    The fact that the life force idea was later superseded by physical explanations when knowledge had sufficiently advanced (and in unpredictable ways) should, I think, lead us to be more cautious before claiming that the same cannot happen with consciousness.
     
    That's the whole point. The case of life and many others (there is no shortage of examples) show, I think, that we should not prejudge the conclusion of ongoing research before all the results are in – especially if all we have is a vague logical argument and subjective judgment.

    Of course, the above goes for both sides. I am not claiming here that science will succeed to explain consciousness, although I have my hunch - as you may guess... But a hunch is no evidence and I certainly don't claim mine is better than another.

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  191. Hi Darrell

    Thanks for linking to your post, it made for a good read.

    It may well be, as you say, that there is some talking past one another going on here. This is one of those topics where one has to be extremely careful to keep in focus the question at hand.

    I'm not sure you have my challenge to Keith exactly right. I'm making no claim that materialism will explain the mind. And I would reject, as you do, the notion of some sort of truth correspondence for materialism. I think the very term truth is unhelpful in this context.

    The point that interests me is this business of naming the problem of consciousness the hard problem, as if the limits of materialism are uniquely felt at the mind/brain interface. It seems to me that the types of philosophical challenges to materialism put in your post apply to any physical explanation of anything. That's why in science we're careful not to say 'here is how it works' and prefer 'here's our best model so far' where the term best is itself carefully defined in terms of predictive capacity in particular.

    The framing of the hard problem appears to be making an extra claim for consciousness, that there is something in its very nature than ensures it will never be reduced to mechanics in that same way that say life once was. Now the challenge I've been putting to Keith is to try to explain how the hard problem of consciousness is different from the hard problem of life.

    Note, we don't say the problem of life is solved. We simply say that our explanatory models are now so reliable that for most people, there doesn't seem to be much mystery left. The question then becomes, could consciousness ever be explained to this degree, or is there a crucial point at which the life/consciousness analogy breaks down?

    I think you are right to say I don't understand the nature of the problem here, in that I'm not convinced the analogy can't hold. And so I can't see why we must rule out in advance our mechanical explanation of consciousness one day being as complete as our explanation of life or rainfall. So you can help, perhaps. What stands consciousness apart from other previously mysterious phenomena?


    Bernard

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  192. Hi Darrell

    I tried posting a response to your blog entry, but it seems this thread is becoming difficult to post to.

    I'm sure there'll be a chance to continue this conversation elsewhere.

    Bernard

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  193. Hi JP: THIS I understand. People sometimes believe that "there's no way that X could be true" and they come to find out they were wrong. Given my personal fallibility I certainly can't exempt myself from this general rule so I do not deny that I could be wrong about consciousness as a physical phenomenon. Of course I also believe that I am not a talking banana--I could be wrong about that too:-) But when I reflect on things, in my judgment conscious awareness isn't the kind of thing I'd expect to come out of the non-sentience of atoms (matter moving around in ways that we associate with consciousness, that seems easy to imagine). When I reflect on my own awareness, things seem to me to look most like dualism. I could be wrong, but since I have not been offered any reason to reject my judgment on the matter (I have been offered some good reasons to be open to the possibility of error) it seems to me that I outta stay with my judgment.

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  194. Hi Keith

    The reason I don't believe I'm a talking banana is that an excellent alternative model of what I am exists. The model that I am a human being is a better fit to the data, and so I resist the talking banana alternative.

    Now, with consciousness, we are in a position where we have no particularly good working model. Neither dualism nor materialism can yet give a convincing account of why conscious experience feels the way it does to certain types of creatures.

    In this case then, it seems unnecessarily confident to rule out one of the options in advance. The banana analogy doesn't appear to hold at all, and your fallibilism and my agnosticism may even be the same thing. If you are saying 'my hunch is the physical model will never explain consciousness, but it's just a hunch and it might turn out to be quite wrong' then our positions, apart from where our hunches initially lead, are indeed identical.

    Bernard

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  195. Hi Bernard: Actually I never really decided between the "talking banana" model of my reality and the more pedestrian view--I just find myself primitively convinced I am a humble math teacher instead of my favorite fruit:-)

    But if we are talking about the 'best fit" for the data, I'd say there is no objective measure of fitness--it's not like you can say there is only a 1% gap between the theory and the evidence which makes it a closer fit than alternatives. You just use your judgment. MY judgment says the world looks dualistic. I'm not sure if I am too confident or not--confidence is likewise subjective since we cannot say things like "the evidence only justifies being 2% confident while you are 75% confident". As in most things, I am open to the possibility I am wrong. I am also open to the possibility I am right:-) I am confident enough in my position that I am committing myself to attempting Christian practice.

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  196. Hi Keith

    I think the objective measurement is the ability of the model to produce predictions. We've been through this before, we get back to Popper and the pragmatic value of preferring the non-falsified theory. A banana has a certain chemical make-up for example, that a human being doesn't. A simply skin sample would provide one means of falsification, therefore.

    I came into this discussion on the back of your claim that physical models simply can't explain consciousness. But your acknowledgement of lack of certainty now modifies that statement to the point that I don't really have anything to disagree with you on. Which is nice.

    Cheers

    Bernard

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  197. Hi Bernard: I am glad we have reached some bit of clarity and niceness:-) I have enjoyed the discussion quite a bit. The thing that motivated this was probably my fault frm the beginning. When I started out by saying that physicla models cannot explain consciousness, I should have probably emphasized that I was just saying that "it seems very much to me that...", reminding you all how wrong I can be. I haven't done the chemical analysis on myself to prove I am not a talking banana, and it might be the case that I'd have to brush up on my chemistry and purchase a lab to perform the experiment, and since bananas don't command very much in todays labor market I'm not sure I could afford it. So I am just going with my gut on this one:-)

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