On his facebook page Shaviro makes an interesting observation about the neurological work of Metzinger and Noe:
Neurophilosophy: Thomas Metzinger (The Ego Tunnel) and Alva Noe (Out of Our Heads) draw opposite conclusions from the same experimental data… Metzinger takes recent neurological research as proof that consciousness is entirely delusional, a false representation of what is going on in our brains, and a virtual simulation of the outside world. Brassier of course picks up on this. Noe, to the contrary, argues for a post-pragmatic, embodied and distributed notion of consciousness, undermining any dualism of inside vs outside, or self vs world. But what makes this even more interesting is that he argues this from much of the same scientific data that are the basis for Metzinger’s diametrically opposed claims.
Here I hope Steven won’t mind that I’ve condensed a couple of his posts together. Bhaskar argues that we must be vigilant with respect to the “nocturnal philosophies” of scientists. I take it that when he refers to “nocturnal philosophies” he’s referring to the specifically philosophical implications they draw from their research, independent of what that research directly shows. Thus, for example, you get nocturnal philosophies among a number of researchers in quantum mechanics, as well as in biology. Now, there is nothing a priori wrong with nocturnal philosophies. It’s just important for us to be aware that they are philosophies and not identical to the scientific findings themselves.
Returning to the specific discussion of neurology and its implications, the question to ask, I think, is whether consciousness has any powers of its own. Here we have a clear criteria for emergence and the individuation of objects. We can agree with both Noe and Metzinger that where there are no brains there is no consciousness, just as we can agree with the chemist that where there is no hydrogen or oxygen there is no water. The ontological question revolves around whether consciousness is exhausted by its neurological explanation or whether consciousness has powers and capacities of its own that while impossible without the neurological are nonetheless unique powers of its own. If consciousness has powers of its own, then it would be an object of its own. If not, then we would be warranted in excluding consciousness from our inventory of what is or what exists. With respect to this latter option, consciousness would merely be an effect and would not be a being in its own right.
It’s important to emphasize here no substance dualism is being asserted here. In entertaining the hypothesis that consciousness is a distinct object in its own right, the point is not to claim that consciousness could exist independent of brains, that it is separable from brains, or that it has spooky powers at odds with its neurological substrate. I would argue that water is distinct as an object from hydrogen and oxygen or even the relation between hydrogen and oxygen. This is because water has powers that are found in neither hydrogen or oxygen, nor in a single molecule of H2O. For example, water can wet paper and slide about on a table, yet a single molecule of H2O does not have these powers. The powers of water are entirely consistent with those of atomic chemistry, but something new emerges when these atoms are linked together and when molecules of H2O are linked together. The question is whether or not something similar is the case with consciousness. Does the emergence of consciousness generate powers that cannot be found at the lower level stratum upon which it is based? That would be the question and would be determinative of whether or not things like subjects are themselves objects.
December 7, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Even when we admit that consciousness is a collective neural activity it is totally different from the description of this activity, which is not true for effects of water. Same with software. Only a fool would seek for a complex program in a logical gate but the low level description in machine code can any time explain the high level description in source code. There isn’t a qualitative difference.
IMO the recent attempts to relate consciousness to the brain is just a new variant of old carbon fetishism. I still have no idea if colors are in the world without brains perceiving them. Who can prove of disprove that Bose-condensates are not sentient even without a complex memory architecture and various feedback-loops? I don’t believe these questions can be resolved by pure thought and re-defining terms or clarifying language doesn’t help much either. It’s not really convincing anyone that the “hard problem” has been solved.
December 7, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Water might not be the best example, though I’m not so sure. Life is perhaps a better example. A living organism has powers in the world that its chemical substratum does not have. Among the more interesting powers a living organism has is the ability to affect that chemical substratum. The case seems to be similar with consciousness. The interesting thing about consciousness is that it can affect its own neurology. Or, at least, this appears to be the case. While I would agree that the hard problem of consciousness hasn’t been solved, I think we can be fairly certain that consciousness is a product of brains. I’ve never seen any plausible evidence for the contrary hypothesis, but there’s a whole slew of evidence for the thesis that consciousness is a product of the brain.
December 7, 2009 at 7:12 pm
“While I would agree that the hard problem of consciousness hasn’t been solved, I think we can be fairly certain that consciousness is a product of brains.”
This is all fine and good, but what happens when we play the causal-game when it comes to the brain? A brain is also a product of many interconnected material-processes, and a conventionally functional brain is the product of many virtual processes too. H2O AS water cannot exist in a vacuum anymore than an emergent-consciousness associated with a brain; both are supported by many conditions.
December 7, 2009 at 7:14 pm
It seems to me that so much of the supposed “shock and awe” value of recent neurophilosophy comes from its contrast with the self-ghettoization of philosophy in the human (i.e., non-physical) realm. The attitude of so many philosophers has been “scientists can do whatever they want with inanimate objects; they will never explain consciousness.” With an attitude like that, even I hope they get knocked to the ground, which is why I’ve always been delighted with the Churchlands & Co. on some level.
But it is a less interesting and less threatening position for those of us who never treated consciousness as some special rift in the cosmos anyway. The treatment of minds in terms of brains becomes no more horrifying than the treatment of large-scale physical phenomena in terms of smaller-scale ones. No more horrifying, but also no more powerful. I don’t see why neurology has any closer a contact with the real than does geology or even geography or sociology, for that matter. But here I know I’m preaching to the choir, Levi.
December 7, 2009 at 7:41 pm
‘I think we can be fairly certain that consciousness is a product of brains. I’ve never seen any plausible evidence for the contrary hypothesis,’
Maybe you’re not looking in the right places.
Consciousness is a state of mind and there is plenty of evidence that minds are not ‘produced’ by brains.
As I have indicated before the Argentine/German tradition of electroneurobiology represents a 150yrs of research.
Also, the so-called ‘hard-problem’ is an avoidable misunderstanding, or misplaced perplexity – it’s only hard if you’re trying to get a mind (or psyche) from a brain. See ‘Ontology of Consciousness: percipient agency.’ ed. Helmut Wautisher, MIT Press.
BTW, have you come across S. Rosen’s ‘The Question of Being: a reversal of heidegger’?
December 7, 2009 at 8:10 pm
No disagreement here, Joe.
December 7, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Water is NOT a very good example, since there is considerable evidence from quantum mechanics that the properties of water can actually be explained by the properties of hydrogen and oxygen. Similarly, we can easily push the case that the ‘emergence’ of life is merely an epistemological one, i.e. that the rules of reductive translation haven’t yet been explained (Pat Churchland loves to stress this).
The crucial problem here is that when consciousness is at stake, the epistemological/ontological distinction seems far less stable, and that has been utilized by many philosophers. John Searle, for instance, argues that the irreducibility of consciousness stems from the direct coincidence of these levels. A phenomenological point, to say the least…
The ontological criterion of “consciousness having distinct capacities” seems, in that sense, to be a little shaky precisely because of the metaphysical appeal of the Cartesian claim of irreducibility. This is particularly reflected in the “knowledge argument” of Jackson: even if consciousness does not have a distinct capacity, the very subjective ‘feel’ is an additional fact on its own… Etc, etc…
Can we really reduce this ‘feel’ to a possession of a concept (like Papineau) or to a skill (like Paul Churchland)? This is where the metaphysical battle is taking place… It often very much resembles the Grundsatz debate, a fact which renders the ‘pragmatic’ choice of first principles especially appealing…
Ironically, this “pragmatic turn” is to be encountered also in the newer texts of (none other than) David Chalmers…
December 7, 2009 at 11:59 pm
ASN,
Perhaps you can explain this point further as I get the sense that you’re attributing a thesis to me that is not my own.:
I have bold faced your remark here as you seem to be suggesting that I am making a claim about whether animate matter (life) can emerge from inanimate matter. If this is what you are claiming, then this is not my thesis. I am quite in agreement with the thesis, to put it crudely, that life can and did arise from inanimate matter. Claims about emergence as I understand them are quite different. First the important point with respect to what I take you to be alluding to. Any emergent phenomena must be consistent with the principles governing the lower level strata on which it is based. In the case of life, the features of atomic chemistry and quanta are both conditions for life and life must be consistent with this physics. The point about emergence with respect to life is simply that with the emergence of life we get new powers or generative mechanisms that can’t be found at the lower levels (i.e., the atomic level). Maybe my point will be clearer if I refer to relations between society and persons. Clearly societies cannot exist without persons, just as life cannot exist without the properties and laws governing atoms. Nonetheless, it is a mistake to suppose, as Margaret Thatcher and Libertarians suppose, that society can be reduced to persons. Rather there are laws or patterns structuring society that can be quite different from those that persons or agents intend or want. Thus, for example, the engagement between you and I right now is structured by the English language. Moreover, as we write to one another we are reproducing the English language. Our intention, however, is not to reproduce the English language but rather to discuss issues of emergence and consciousness. Likewise, the capitalist need not have the intention or desire to exploit his workers (as Marx himself often noted), but because of how the economic system itself functions that exploitation necessarily takes place in our current historical moment regardless of what we intend. The point here is that we have emergent patterns and laws at the social level that are quite different than those of the actors or persons that make up the society. These are unique generative mechanisms (what I would call “objects”) that cannot be found among any of the persons composing the social system. Likewise with life.
You write:
No, the two positions are entirely differently. Descartes, under a standard reading, is a substance dualist. A substance dualist is someone who advocates the view that matter and consciousness are two entirely different substances. I am not making that claim. Rather, I am making the claim that when elements of matter are related in a particular way– in this case neurons –we can get powers and capacities that cannot be found at the lower level substrate. In other words, the point here is about relations and what new powers come into being when matter is related in a particular way. That said, consciousness under this construal is thoroughly material or a product of neurons. This is entirely different than the dual substance theory advocated by Descartes. All the refusal of reduction states is that we cannot find these powers or capacities among the elements themselves. Here I think you’re missing the point of the water example. Yes, I agree, water is explained by the quantum properties of hydrogen and oxygen. The point is that water takes on certain powers when multiple molecules of H2O are linked with one another. The aggregation here makes a difference.
December 8, 2009 at 3:58 am
Thanks for citing my Facebook remarks, Levi.
We are really just at the tip of an iceberg here. It’s worth at least considering panpsychism, or the claim that consciousness, or at least some sort of mentality, can arise even in entities that do not possess brains. Whitehead can be cited in this regard, as he maintains that every “actual entity” has a “mental” as well as a “physical” pole. And David Skrbina points out that panpsychism has a long history in Western philosophy, from the pre-Socratics right on through to the 20th century. (Skrbina also edited an anthology of contemporary writings on panpsychism, in which both Graham and Iain Grant have articles).
But in the context of Levi’s posting, perhaps the most interesting contemporary panpsychist argument is that of the analytic philosopher Galen Strawson. Strawson is (unlike Levi or Graham or myself) a reductionist, i.e. he considers subatomic particles to be the ultimate real out of which everything else is composed. And his argument for panpsychism is, surprisingly enough, based on his *rejection* of any strong notion of emergence: he thinks everything that exists on a larger scale can be entirely explained from the properties of its micro-constituents.
Strawson spends a lot of time, precisely, on the case of water: he says that this is not an instance of emergence, because all the properties of water can in fact be seen to arise directly from its chemical and physical sub-constituents. He similarly claims that life is not an instance of genuine emergence, because it too can be explained on the basis of its chemical sub-constituents.
However, Strawson sees consciousness or mentality as the one thing that absolutely *cannot* be explained on the basis of its physical micro-constituents. This would suggest that consciousness is in fact a genuine case (the *only* genuine case) of emergence in a radical sense. But since Strawson rejects radical emergence as impossible, he takes the only alternative to be that consciousness is always already a basic constituent of matter, at the ultimate (subatomic) level. Thus quarks and leptons must themselves already contain consciousness in some form.
Now, obviously Strawson’s whole argument fails if we reject — as I do — his reductionism and anti-emergentism. [Actually, I find myself moving towards some version of anti-emergentism -- or at least I think contemporary notions of emergence are too broad and unsupported -- but that is a subject for another time. But I wouldn't base my skepticism towards emergence on anything like Strawson's ultimate reductionism].
But — I am still fascinated by how Strawson is drawn to panpsychist claims. It certainly shows that even extreme reductionism need not entail the conclusions drawn by the Churchlands, or by Metzinger.
December 8, 2009 at 6:17 am
“Shock and awe” with respect to the humanities and the human essence isn’t original to neurosophilosophy of course. I can track S&A back at least to Alan Turings seminal work about thinking machines, where he suggested the “Turing Test” and it has been popularized by the funny machine-centrism of Marvin Minsky. Revenche of the nerds part I.
The most interesting debate that came out of this so far, has been that about free will vs neural determinism. Eliminativists pleaded against free will of course whereas the humanities argued that determinism and free will are not mutually exclusive which is hard to grok in a realist setting i.e. without redefining terms and doing semantical surgery.
Introducing the homunculus using emergence is a seductive option. However none has been found so far.
December 8, 2009 at 9:42 am
Levi wrote:
All the refusal of reduction states is that we cannot find these powers or capacities among the elements themselves.
Who thinks this? Perhaps a couple of extreme identity theorists, although I can’t name them. Eliminative materialism does not claim that we can find consciousness among the elements of the brain itself. What it claims is that theories about consciousness can be expressed in terms of theories about processes within the brain. At no point does it suggest that complicated emergent processes can be isolated in individual elements.
To take an example from the non-reductive side of the fence: Anomalous monism does not claim that because consciousness is not fully explainable in terms of neuroscience it is an emergent property that is somehow ontologically different in terms of its powers and capacities than the material substrate, rather there is a parallelism between the mental and the physical which is explainable in terms of supervenience and,crucially, talk about one cannot be reduced to talk about the other.
The division between reductive and non-reductive theories in the philosophy of mind is a purely epistemological one, in that you can find materialists on both sides. Everybody thinks that aggregation makes a difference apart from people who believe in an irreducible soul.
December 8, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Levi, you misunderstood me. But, that is probably because I didn’t really explain myself..
There are several points to be made.
First, the concept of emergence is tied to the criterion of translation. If the properties at the macro-scale can be TRANSLATED into the properties of the constituents on the micro-scale via some bridging principles, then those properties are reducible. So, it doesn’t matter if water is ‘wet’, since quantum mechanics provided the bridging principles necessary for expressing that property on a micro-level (regardless of whether it is one or multiple molecules). In that sense, the ‘emergence’ of water was not really an ontological emergence, but merely epistemological (i.e. illusory), since it stemmed from our insufficient knowledge. The point made about life is very similar. Once physicists specify the bridging principles, the reduction will be possible.
But, there is a second problem, tied to problem of the existence of the macro-properties. As a non-reductivist, you can always claim that ‘water’ (or ‘society’) is a distinct ‘object’ since it possesses properties non-existent at the lower level (societal morals or whatever). By doing so, you effectively reject the criterion of reduction used in almost every scientific enterprise. The problem with this, then, is that the delineation of the sphere of existing objects becomes somewhat arbitrary… Why? Because of the characteristics of scientific explanation… In the brilliant last section of Consciousness Explained, Dennett shows how every scientific explanation is, in fact, an “explaining away”, since it, by definition, leaves something out:
“Leaving something out is not a feature of failed explanations, but of successful explanations” (1991, p.454)
That is to say, if you are to really explain a macro-phenomenon (by specifying the translation principles), you effectively ‘explain away’ the macro-level property: the wetness of water, the goldness of gold, or the qualia ‘feel’, for that matter…
Of course, you can still claim that explanation does not mean reduction, but then you are really on thin ground, since you lack a criterion of demarcation of objects (and objectively existing properties)…
This leads me nicely to my last point: the certainty of Descartes. My point was not to introduce his substance dualism (this type of dualism is long dead and you will not find a serious philosopher today defending his thesis). On the contrary, the idea was to emphasize the privileged access to a certain type of knowledge, in the case of consciousness… Pain, for instance, can effectively be ‘translated’ into lower-level properties and by itself does not do anything which is objectively observable (it lacks a distinct capacity). But, is pain reducible? Isn’t the feeling of pain itself an additional property? This is the real enigma, and this is where the metaphysical battle is fought….
December 8, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Yes, ASN, I understand the thesis. I think Dennett’s thesis here about reductivism is clearly mistaken. Were this the case there would be only one science in principle, subatomic physics and there would be no object for sciences such as chemistry, psychology, biology, anthropology, etc. Everything would be deducible in terms of that one science, without there being any other generative mechanisms studied by other sciences. Natural selection and genetics, for example, are perfectly consistent with subatomic physics yet subatomic physics have nothing to say about these domains as they’re at a different level of scale or stratification. Were we to take your thesis seriously (especially your one about epistemology) everything from stars to biological organisms to persons would be illusory. Ontologically I don’t think that’s a thesis that can be consistently sustained. For example, you are minimally committed to the thesis that it is the scientist that is making the claim that everything but subatomic particles is illusory. Here you find yourself in a conundrum: You either concede that there is at least one entity in the universe that is not a subatomic particle and that is not an illusion (i.e., the scientist doing the research), or you remain consistent and claim that the scientist and his utterances are themselves an illusion at which point you’re plunged into absurdity. Generally I find that the sort of reductivist move you’re promoting proceeds by forgetting the self-reflexive moment of the scientist making the utterance. Given that even if you take the second consistent route you’ll still proceed in practice in a way that indicates that the scientist is not an illusion or mere subatomic patterns but an agency that while not possible without subatomic particles nonetheless not the same as subatomic particles, we then arrive at the existence of at least one entity besides these particles. Where there is one there is many.
December 8, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Oh, but that is clearly fallacious…
The problem with that argument has been pointed out by the Churchlands very vividly. The argument, then, goes like this: you cannot really explain away the existence of utterances, since that very explanation is an utterance; therefore, in the explanation you always already presuppose the existence of the utterance… etc. etc.
But, this is clearly circular, since it takes for granted what is to be explained, namely the existence of an utterance (i.e. what the utterance comprises)… The whole point of the reductivist argument is, on the contrary, that even this reflective moment is to be re-conceptualized… In other words, the reductivist has to de-transcendetalize the existent explanatory principle…
To pinpoint the problem, Patricia Churchland gives a similar argument: “The anti-vitalist denies the existence of the vital spirit. But, if his claim is true, then he cannot be animated by a vital spirit. Therefore, he’s dead and his argument is just meaningless.”
It is in this analogy that we can clearly see the fallacy… The problem is to re-conceptualize the transcendental itself (i.e. what constitutes the person of the scientist), and not merely the empirical…
So, when you warn the reductivist about absurdity, aren’t you perpetrating the same old phenomenological mistake that Deleuze pointed out when introducing the impersonal field in Logic of Sense?
We should reject the FORCED choice between actual, personal existence and undifferentiated abyss…
The reductivist simply does that….
December 8, 2009 at 4:59 pm
ASN,
You need to go back and read more carefully as the argument you attribute to me was not even remotely the argument I put forward. I made two points: First, I made the point that minimally scientific inquiry requires scientific inquirers to be possible. Under your form of reductivism, it follows as a logical conclusion that since everything but subatomic particles is an illusion (your words, not mine) scientific inquirers are all other branches of science as well as scientific theories must themselves be illusions. This conclusion is absurd. Secondly, I stated that in order for there to be scientific disciplines besides subatomic physics it be necessary that there be generative mechanisms (i.e., objects) that correspond to these fields of inquiry. Yet under your construal the only real generative mechanisms would be those found in subatomic physics. Finally, your point about Deleuze and the transcendental field does not work here. Assuming that my ontology were the same as Deleuze’s ontology (which it is not), nonetheless I have in no way traced the transcendental from the empirical in these arguments. With the exception of inquirers, I have made no claims as to what generative mechanisms (objects) exist. These generative mechanisms can be quite at odds with how we experience the world. The question of what generative mechanisms exist is a question for actual inquiry, not something that can be decided from the armchair. My argument is not “circular” but is transcendental. It raises the question of what the world must be like for certain practices like science to be possible.
December 8, 2009 at 5:45 pm
But, the nuances do not really change anything.
What I reject is your first point:
“minimally scientific inquiry requires scientific inquirers to be possible. Under your form of reductivism, it follows as a logical conclusion that since everything but subatomic particles is an illusion (your words, not mine) scientific inquirers are all other branches of science as well as scientific theories must themselves be illusions.”
A big and resolute NO. The de-transcendetalization implies NOT that the scientific inquiries are ‘illusions’, but that they are not what we thought they were. That is to say, these activities themselves ARE reducible to micro-level properties. To assume that it is either irreducibility or absurdity is,in itself, absurd… The real task is to problematize the ‘transcendental” – i.e. to redefine the inquiries along with the empirical…
You end up with something like: “sub-atomic properties inquire about other sub-atomic properties”… That is far from being absurd…
I have no problem with the generative mechanisms as long as they are empirical…
December 8, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Regarding “nocturnal philosophies,” do you think there is a different status between philosophical implications drawn by researchers, and conceptual frameworks underpinning their research?
The reason I ask is that Alva Noë paints a picture of brain science researchers being simultaneously contemptuous of philosophy as a discipline, and unknowingly indebted to a particular philosophical tradition:
Francis Crick did us a major service by taking seriously and publicizing the problem of consciousness. But in the journal Nature he wrote, “Scientists need no longer stand by listening to the tedious arguments of philosophers perpetually disagreeing with each other. The problem of consciousness is now a scientific problem.”
I say, “Bravo!” Consciousness is a scientific problem! But Crick framed the problem in terms of an unquestioned set of philosophical dogmas; namely that the key to consciousness will be found in the brain, that that’s literally where experience and thought take place.
http://www.salon.com/env/atoms_eden/2009/03/25/alva_noe/
This is similar to what Hubert Dreyfus has said of Artificial Intelligence:
In the early sixties students from the AI lab would come and say: “You philosophers have been reflecting in your armchairs for over 2000 years and you still don’t understand intelligence. We are succeeding where you philosophers have failed.”
…
Far from replacing philosophy, the pioneers of AI had learned a lot from the philosophers. Without realising it, AI researchers were hard at work turning rationalist philosophy into a research program.
http://leidlmair.at/doc/WhyHeideggerianAIFailed.pdf
I think there is something a bit odd about those two particular fields, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
The picture has been very different in physics. There are theories that one of the reasons that the key conceptual breakthroughs in early 20th century physics were made in Germany rather than Great Britain was due to the influence of nature philosophy on the German education system; and that the fruitfulness of the work of Riemann, Hilbert and Einstein came from them occupying the “magic triangle” of physics, mathematics and philosophy.
December 8, 2009 at 10:21 pm
ASN,
If I take my cat, separate all its cells, and scatter them about the floor is it a cat?
December 8, 2009 at 10:25 pm
References for that last bit: “Insights of genius – imagery and creativity in science and art” – Miller & a chapter that I now can’t find in “The architecture of modern mathematics – essays in history and philosophy” eds Ferreirós and Gray.
December 10, 2009 at 4:48 am
How does OOO deal with atheism, a stance that in its most basic form affirms the non-reality of an entity (God does not exist)?
December 10, 2009 at 4:55 am
That is to say, could one be an OOOntologist and an atheist at the same time if as an atheist you were privileging one entity (matter) or minority of entities over myriad others?
December 10, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Joe,
OOO doesn’t take a stance on what entities exist, but is only a thesis about what properties objects must have if they do exist. What set of considerations leads you to the question of atheism for OOO theorists?