I would like to respond to some recent remarks of Herbert FJ Muller at
this site about a Journal of Consciousness Studies paper by Natika Newton
and me. The paper (`Three Paradoxes of Phenomenal Consciousness', JCS 5,
1998, pp. 419-442) tries to contribute to integrating phenomenology with
neuroscience and analytic philosophy of mind. In doing so, it attempts to
bring together camps that traditionally have viewed each other in `us versus
them' categories. Our view is that, in a period of revolutionary ferment,
you can't maintain `us' and `them' categories. The `us' (whichever it is)
is a thesis, the `them' an antithesis, and no proposed synthesis can even
be heard for what it is as long as the `us' still hears it as an instance
of the `them.' When I discovered Newton's work five years ago, it was obvious
that we were both integrating phenomenology with neuroscience (along with
the latter's empiricist-analytic philosophical tradition), yet even with
this integrative project in common, we had to overcome an initial tendency
to regard each other, respectively, as `one of THEM,' since I was just slightly
more steeped in phenomenology, and she slightly more in neuroscience and
analytic philosophy. What we learned is that, if anything new is to happen,
if there is to be any new synthesis capable of surmounting the obstacles
that made the thesis and the antithesis both problematic in the first place,
you have to let go of the `us versus them.'
Muller objects to our attempt to integrate neuroscience with phenomenology because he says the neuroscience we use presupposes what he calls `MIR' (`mind-independent reality'). He then proposes a form of panpsychism as an alternative to MIR. `All mental structures are created (constructed) inside subjective mind-nature experience, which is originally undivided, they are not encountered outside it. Thus they cannot be, nor can they become, mind-independent.' (By the way, although we do not endorse Muller's panpsychism, we also explicitly reject the notion that the way the world appears in consciousness is a representation of the way it `really' is `out there.') A rejection of MIR in the sense Muller uses in this context (more on the different senses of `MIR' later) naturally leads to panpsychism, since consciousness would then have to be present everywhere and at all times in order for reality to be always dependent on it. This would mean there could never be any time or place in the history of the universe when there was or will be no consciousness for reality to be dependent upon.
A number of authors have been taking panpsychism seriously in recent years, notably Chalmers (e.g., in his 1995 JCS paper). Let me emphasize, however, that Chalmers freely admits, and at times even emphasizes, that panpsychism per se does not resolve the traditional aspects of the mind-body problem -- the problem of mental causation (How is it that conscious choices have causal power, yet don't create ruptures in the normal physical and chemical causal sequences in our bodies?); the knowledge argument (Consciousness can't be literally identical with a physical process, since knowing everything physical about someone by itself can't tell you what the person's consciousness feels like to that person); and the imaginability argument (If we can imagine a possible world in which zombies do all the physical behaviors that we do, then it would seem that our physical dimension by itself could exist without consciousness, and thus can't be identical with it).
Traditionally, what is so troublesome about these three problems is that the first of the three is easy to resolve if we assume that consciousness is identical with a physical process, and the second and third are easy to resolve if we assume that it is nonphysical; but when we try to integrate the three solutions, we end up contradicting ourselves. So physicalists tend to ignore the second and third problems, and nonphysicalists tend to sweep the first under the rug. Part of what is refreshing about Chalmers (for many people) is that he successfully gets us to take all three problems seriously at once.
Why does panpsychism per se not resolve these three problems? Because it merely transposes the three problems to a different context. E.g., suppose a stream of water running down a pipe has consciousness. (Presumably this refers to some minimal level of consciousness, since even we humans seem to have much more consciousness when awake than when in deep sleep or coma.) Even so, we would still have to take seriously the ontological problem of the relationship between the conscious and the physical aspects (or `poles') of the water stream, and in doing so we would again confront the same three problems. If Jackson's Mary knows all the facts about water streams in pipes that can be learned through science, math, and philosophy, this knowledge by itself still can't tell her what the water stream feels like when we stick a knife into it, and Jackson's argument implies that the water stream's consciousness is distinguishable from, or non-identical with, any combination of such physical aspects (or `poles') of water streams. On the other hand, the regular principles of chemistry and physics do not seem to be ruptured when the water stream feels good or feels bad; so, if physical event A leads to physical event B, yet B is the result of the water stream's feeling good at that particular moment, then it seems to follow that the water stream's feeling good is identical with physical event A. But even at the level of panpsychism, we can't have our cake and eat it too. If the conscious aspect (or `pole') of the water stream is identical with its physical pole, then the conscious pole can't be different from the physical pole -- yet the knowledge argument and the imaginability argument entail that it must be different. We still have the same set of problems to deal with.
Many traditional solutions have attempted to avoid this problem, but turned out on analysis to be deceptively facile. E.g., Davidson says that the physical and mental are `really' aspects of the same event, but only `seem' different because they result from viewing that event from different `perspectives,' just as the front and back of the same house appear different from different perspectives. But the problem is that the front and back would not appear different from different perspectives if there were really no difference between the front and back to begin with. Davidson wants the same event to appear different from different perspectives, without there being any difference in reality that accounts for why the different perspectives would appear different.
This brings us back to Muller's
point about `mind-independent reality' (`MIR'). There are actually
four different meanings that can be attached to this term, and Muller uses
them all. It sometimes means
(1) The thesis that our minds represent reality as it really is (Newton
and I explicitly reject MIR in this sense).
(2) The denial that all beings, including conscious ones, are interrelated
and thus would not be what they are without those interrelations (Newton
and I, in other works, both reject MIR in this sense, although the issue
doesn't come up in our joint paper).
(3) The assumption that, as Muller puts it, `in MIR the two poles [subjective
and objective] are assumed to be entirely split from each other'; Newton
and I in our paper explicitly reject MIR in that sense.
(4) The thesis that, given a proposition depicting a real state of affairs,
though the state of affairs may be relational, and though one or more of
the relata may be a conscious being, the truth or falsity of that proposition
does not depend on whether someone believes that it is true or false. E.g.,
take Muller's proposition that `It is safe to assume that all mental activities
require brain activities....' This proposition is either true or false;
if it is true, it does not become false because someone denies it; if it
is false, it does not become true because someone affirms it.
In sense (4), Newton and I do believe in MIR. That does not mean that we think science has nailed down a perfect apprehension of what the reality is that is `independent of our minds' in this sense. Part of the confusion here results from ignoring Husserl's distinction between intentional objects and real objects. To say that my intentional representation of the international conspiracy against me does not reflect reality is different from saying that there is no truth about whether there is an international conspiracy against me or not. Our position is that there is a truth about this, and that my belief in the international conspiracy does not make it true, nor does someone's denial of it make it false. Similarly, when we speak of `representation' as an element of consciousness, we are not automatically, as Muller thinks, `assuming that [our mental structures] "represent" a referent, in a postulated real (though forever inaccessible) mind-independent metaphysical world.' When we say that a conscious feeling includes a representational aspect, we mean that it represents such intentional objects as `a tightness in my throat' (though in fact the tightness may be in my stomach, or even merely in my imagination); or that it feels `as if I were choking' (though in fact no one is literally choking); or, in the case of perception, that an object `seems to have red pasted to the surface of it.' To say that we have these representations is not to postulate that they match an `external reality,' let alone a metaphysical one. In the examples just mentioned, we explicitly reject that.
We certainly agree with Muller that `certainty always remains provisional
and incomplete' and that `objective knowledge is a specialization, within
phenomenology, of mental activity.' However, whether taking science in this
way entails `utilizing, on an ad hoc and as-if basis, an (inaccessible)
mind-independent external world as a temporary reference or scaffolding
for thinking' depends upon which of the four senses of `mind-independent
world' is meant.
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Ralph Ellis
e-mail <ralphellis@mindspring.com>