General Articles 7

The General Articles section provides summaries and reviews of papers, articles, books etc relevant to quantum consciousness.

General Articles 7 covers works on philosophy relevant to quantum consciousness.

1.) Mental presence and the temporal present - George Franck - Discusses time and consciousness

2.) Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness - David Chalmers - Seminal work that attacked many conventional ideas on consciousness

3.) Quantum Approaches to Consciousness - Harald Atmanspacher

4.) The knowledge argument & the inadequacy of scientific knowledge - Elizabeth Schier

5.) The Myths We Live By - Mary Midgley - Criticism of modern scientific thinking

6.) Science and Poetry - Mary Midgeley Further criticism of modern scientific thinking

1.)

Mental presence and the temporal present

George Franck

Technische University of Vienna

in Brain and Being, ed. Gordon Globus, Karl Pribram & Giuseppe Vitiello John Benjamins ISBN 90 272 5194 0

This paper appears to be something of a rarity in being basically a philosophical work that does not try to force consciousness into the straitjacket of classical physics/conventional neuroscience.

Franck concentrates on the question of the relationship between time and in particular the connection between consciousness and the present time. He says that there is no concept of the present in either quantum theory or relativity. In these theories, there is no part of the universe that is marked out from the rest as being the present. The criticism of this approach is that in ignoring the present, science ignores consciousness. For humans as conscious beings, everything that we know to exist makes itself known through conscious awareness at the present moment.

Franck also discusses memory in relation to consciousness and the concept of the present. Temporal change means that situations that had been in the future become present situations and then become past situations. The existence of memory allows humans to distinguish between the present and the past. Franck suggests that it is consciousness which creates the concept of the present, because not withstanding the ability to remember the past and speculate about the future, direct conscious perception and experience is focused on a single point in time, and it is not clear that such a thing as the present would exist without consciousness. Franck differentiates between direct perception and experience on the one hand and conscious thinking and memory on the other. he takes this to be the distinction between the temporally changing external world and the thoughts and reflections of the brain itself.

Franck considers the question of perception, which presents in a single state and yet is never in the same state. He views anything which is perceived as being singled out from the many possibilities of the state vector, and then brought into the present. This is only for a moment and each moment another state is manifested. On this basis, the flow of the time comprises states that appear in the present and then vanish into the past. Energy inputs into the brain are sensory information that produces perception, but this functions in such a way as to seem to be out there rather than in the brain.

In memory, the original perceptions are reactualised. The memory structure that performs the reactualisation and the original perception are separated in time. The two states are drawing on separate information, the original external input in one case and the stored memory in the other. However, the feel of the perception is different. The initial perception is much more concrete than the memory. The creation of memories demands energy. In perception, the energy comes directly from the environment, but in memory this link has been interrupted. This is reflected in their different feel in consciousness. In the original perception, one of the alternatives within the vector was selected to actually happen. Original perceptions are separated from subsequent recreation in memory by time. In one respect this is conventional physical time as measured by clocks. However, this is not the only difference. There is also the difference of the less substantial experience provided by memory, as against the original perception.

Franck attempts to explain this difference in terms of quantum theory. Each state entering the brain system contributes a weighting to the probabilities which may later be actualised as an experience of the present moment. Actualisation in the present means that the probability of a particular experience has moved from less than unity to unity. This temporal flow, with states being brought into the present is distinguished from time in the real world outside the brain. The present moment is argued to persist for ever, but the states manifesting in the present are constantly changing. The idea of the flow of time is something wholly derived from conscious experience. There is a modern distinction between the time of physics measured by clocks and subjective time as it is experienced. The experience of ‘now’ or the present moment is indistinguishable from the conscious experience as a whole. Consciousness is conceived to be about something and there is a problem in separating it from its own contents. Husserl is quoted as having concentrated attention on the relative motion between consciousness and the presence of consciousness. He could look at it from the point of view of a ‘now’ at rest while events passed by or ‘now’ passing events that were at rest. However, he never appeared to have resolved this distinction.

It is pointed out that in Heideger and much Eastern philosophy this distinction becomes less of a problem, because of the idea that being or consciousness can ultimately be separated from the entities that form the contents of consciousness. This attitude allows consciousness as such to come to the fore. It is this pure consciousness of ‘being’ stripped of the clutter of the contents of consciousness that is missing from physics.

The author suggests that content-free consciousness is a pure state of the mental world, while the quantum wave is a pure state of the physical world. He sees these both as symmetries when either the mental world is actualised by an experience, or when a particular physical state is selected from the quantum range of probabilities.

References:-

1.)Bergson, Henri (1889) - Time and free will - Harper

2.)Del Giudici et al (1988) - Vacuum evolution - Physics Letters, B 206, 661-664

3.) Franck, Georg (2001) - Time, actuality, novelty and history - in, Life and Motion of socio-economic units  - Taylor and Francis

4.) Franck, Georg (2003) - How time passes  - in, The nature of time - Kluwer Academic Publishers

5.) Globus, Gordon (2003) - Quantum closures and disclosures - John Benjamins

6.) Heidegger, Martin (1927) - Being and time - Harper & Row

7.) Husserl, Edmund (1966) - The phenomenology of internal time consciousness - Indiana UP

8.) Jibu, Mari & Kunio Yasue (1995) - Quantum Brain Dynamics and Consciousness

9.) Pauli, Wolfgang (1994)  - Writings on physics and philosophy  - Springer

10.) Pöppel, Ernst (1997) - The brain’s way to create nowness - Ed,- H. Atmanspacher - in, Time, temporality, now   Springer

11.) Pribram, Karl (1991) - Brain and perception - Lawrence Erlbaum

2.)

Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness

David Chalmers

University of California Santa Cruz

Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2, No. 3, 1995, pp. 200-19

Chalmers seeks to distinguish the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness from all the other problems of neuroscience, which are termed ‘easy’ problems. He lists the easy problems as, discrimination and reaction to environmental stimuli, integration of information, reporting mental states, access to internal states, focus of attention, control of behaviour and the difference between wakefulness and sleep.

He says that all these problems look to be solvable in terms of computational and neural mechanisms. In several cases, we can expect to find mechanisms on a classical physical scale which brings together or retrieve information. Sleep/wakefulness could be solved by a description of the relevant neurophysiology. There is a clear idea as to the ways in which we might go about explaining them.

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience, the subjective experience that accompanies the information processing. The something it is like to be a conscious organism. Chalmers prefers the terms ‘experience’ or ‘conscious experience’ to ‘qualia’ or ‘phenomenal consciousness’.

In general, Chalmers complains that there is a slipperyness to the treatment of consciousness by scientists and philosophers. Articles tend to start with their authors puzzling over the nature of subjectivity. Later in the article, the authors theory of consciousness is explained, and it is pronounced that there is no real problem after all. But on closer examination the article if found to have only tackled one of the ‘easy problems.’

The easy problems tend to involve functions of the brain and in principle any function can be explained by a mechanism, much as the function of heriditary information was explained by the mechanism of DNA. Even something more complex like the functioning of living organisms including humans could be explained in terms of the mechanisms for multiple functions such a reproduction, metabolism, response to the environment. Even seemingly immaterial aspects such as learning can be approached in this way by explaining the mechanisms by which information is absorbed and stored and how behaviour is altered in response to this. Reductive processes work in this way throughout the sciences.

However, the function/mechanism approach fails with consciousness. This goes beyond problems of how functions are performed. There is nothing about being a gene except transmitting information from one generation to the next, but there is more about conscious information processing in the brain than just processing information. It is a puzzle as to why all brain activity is not unconscious, as unconscious activity appears perfectly adequate to the task of processing and responding to.

Chalmers claims that a number of scientific attempts to get to grips with consciousness in the decade before his own book, in fact only tackled the easy problems. Thus Crick and Koch identified the so-called 40Hz oscillation as being correlated with activity in a number of parts of the brain that produce things we are conscious of. It was suggested that the oscillations bound the brain into a unity, and it was also suggested that they were correlates of consciousness. It was not suggested that they actually produced consciousness. Thus the theory does not contain an explanation for how consciousness is produced.

Chalmers takes the same view of Baar’s global workspace theory. Baars sees the contents of consciousness as a central processor coordinating a range of brain functions, and broadcasting what one specialist area may need to know about another specialist area. The theory is quite promising in terms of some aspects of cognition, and the differences between the conscious and the unconscious. However, it contains no explanation of why we have or need to have any experience of what is going on. The theory claims that consciousness arises because its information is accessible by the whole brain, but it produces no reason why whole brain activity should be any more conscious than other activity. Chalmers thinks that similar criticisms could be applied to all the other main theories of the period.

Chalmers feels that a number of approaches were adopted to get round consciousness. Some tackled ‘easy problems’ and some even suggested that consciousness might be beyond the reach of science. Another approach, of which Dennett has been the most notable exponent, was effectively consciousness denial. Some claimed that consciousness could not exist because it was not verifiable on an external basis, while others claimed it was the same thing as the ability to discriminate or report. Chalmers feels this is unsatisfactory given the central nature of conscious experience in our lives. With still other accounts, he complains of effective sleight of hand, when a functional account, suddenly has consciousness added at a later stage without apparent explanation.

Chalmers has more respect for theories that try to identify which parts or processes of the brain are related to consciousness. He considers this may be helpful, but stresses that any complete theory will need to go beyond this to explain why these particular components of the brain are conscious.

In looking for his own theory of consciousness, Chalmers takes experience as a fundamental. Most phenomena are explained by science in terms of lower level or simpler entities, but in physics there are a few fundamentals or given properties that are not explained, but which can be shown to relate to everything else in the world. As such, the theory is felt likely to have more in common with physics and biology, because biology does not involve fundamental properties in the way that physics does.

Chalmers theory of consciousness relates to information, which he understands as information states embedded in information space. He suggests that some information has two basic aspects, a physical aspect and a phenomenal aspect. This is suggested as a basic principle that could explain the emergence of experience from physical matter, with experience arising as one aspect, while physical processing of information is another.

The reason for looking in this area mainly boils down to the role of the brain as a massive information processor and thus a likelihood that information and consciousness are related in some way. The chief problem with the theory, particularly when compared with some of the quantum theories of consciousness, is the lack of mechanism as to how the thing would work. Of course, any proposed mechanism would be even more speculative than the main theory itself, but at least it would allow people to test out the plausibility of their mechanism. The Penrose/Hameroff model has aroused much debate in this respect, because it does offer fairly detailed mechanisms. Although some of the resulting criticisms have been rather ill informed, they do at least test the robustness of the theory’s suggestions.

3.)

Quantum Approaches to Consciousness

Harald Atmanspacher

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Atmanspacher starts his article by stressing that the randomness inherent in quantum theory is in sharp contrast to the determinism that permeates classical physics. This randomness is a fundamental characteristic of the theory, not a result of ignorance of the full system, as is the case in statistical mechanics.

Atmanspacher is also careful to draw a clear distinction between correlation and cause and effect. When two effects are correlated, one effect may cause the other, but equally well it may not, with the correlation being due to third cause lying in the common history of the two effects. He points out that while causation explains why something happens, correlation does not of itself explain why either of the correlated effects happen. Thus the fact that certain brain areas or functions are activated during consciousness does not necessarily explain what causes consciousness.

Atmanspacher discusses the ideas of the physicist, Henry Stapp. Stapp’s ideas on quantum theory are quite close to the Copenhagen interpretation, with major importance attached to the distinction between the observer and the observed. Stapp places the divide between observer and observed in the brain, and thinks that consciousness can influence brain activity.

The article gives some prominence to Beck and Eccles. They have done detailed work on possible quantum level information transfer at the synapses, involving electron transfer between biomolecules, but they have not provided a link from this to consciousness.

Atmanspacher appears relatively sympathetic to the Penrose/Hameroff model, which is unusual in consciousness studies. He comments that Hameroff’s microtubule theory is the lowest physical level at which a quantum consciousness theory has been attempted, with other theories implemented somewhere between synaptic and neuronal assembly level.

The article explains that the Penrose’s thinking derives from the Gödel theorem, and his interpretation of the theorem, which is that there is some non-computable function in the human brain. This latter is realised by a gravitationally based reduction of the wave function. Atmanspracher points out that in contrast to other quantum theories of consciousness, such as Stapp, Penrose is proposing an alteration to the presently agreed quantum theory. Hameroff has provided the physical position in the brain for the implementation of this theory. He suggests that the microtubules within the neurons might be a suitable location, because they might be screened from the environment to support quantum coherence for a sufficient period of time.

Atmanspracher, who is much more open minded than most commentators on consciousness does, nevertheless, fall into the old habit of quoting the critics of the model without quoting Hameroff’s response. Thus he mentions Tegmark’s objections to the theory based on the speed of decoherence, but not Hameroff’s criticism of Tegmark’s calculations. Similarly, the article refers to a paper by Grush and Churchland as providing an objection on philosophical grounds, but it does not explain either their objections, not mention the reply to them by Penrose and Hameroff. The last part of the section on Penrose/Hameroff also states that there are no plans for empirical confirmation of the theory, whereas Hameroff has proposed 20 possible tests, including plans to test Penrose’s theory of a gravitationally driven wave function collapse.

4.)

The knowledge argument & the inadequacy of scientific knowledge

Elizabeth Schier

Dept. of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Australia

Journal of Consciousness Studies, 15, No. 1, 2008, pp. 39+62

This paper returns to the sad thought experiment of Mary, the colour scientist, who knows the full science of colour, but has been confined to a black and white environment, and the resulting question of whether she would discover anything new when she was eventually released into a coloured environment. The long debate on this requires some patience for the lay person to whom the difference between the study of how photons oscillate and the experience of red seems obvious. Other examples that might be more forceful are the medical student that knew everything about amputation with anaesthetic, and later had his leg amputated without an anaesthetic. Would he/she learn anything new. Or another student in the same medical school who knew the whole science of sex but had never had an orgasm. Would he/she learn anything new when they had an orgasm? Given the perversity that marks so much of consciousness studies, it should come as no surprise that the dominant view in conventional consciousness studies seems to be that the unlucky Mary would learn nothing new on being released from her black and white prison.

It looks to be that the underlying reason for this stance by many in consciousness studies is metaphysical. It seems to be assumed that if Mary does experience something new when she comes out of her prison, it means there is some non-physical thing outside of science that produces this effect. But this assumption itself rests on the dualist assumption that consciousness is non-physical, which nearly everyone in consciousness studies rejects. If consciousness were to be a physical thing or process, then there is no reason in terms of physics why it should not have an influence. Much of consciousness studies plays fast and loose with the dualist concept of the non-physical, rejecting it as impossible, when it wants to refute the possibility of any kind of spiritual influence, yet arguing that consciousness cannot have any causal influence because it is non-physical. Logically it follows that if dualism is false, there is no such thing as the non-physical, and therefore consciousness must be physical, and physical processes all have influences on the surrounding universe. As Antonio Damasio pointed out in his book ‘Descartes Error’ much of the medical and scientific community is still mired in the Cartesian assumptions that it claims to reject.

Schier indicates two main things that need to be shown in order to demonstrate that Mary does learn something new when she comes out of the black and white prison, firstly that there is a difference between scientific knowledge and direct experience, and secondly that the experience is physical even though it can’t be demonstrated by scientific knowledge. Unfortunately, she chooses to concentrate on the first question.

In practise, the only convincing arguments for this stance are ones that involve a sleight of hand, such as stimulating parts of Mary’s cortex to produce the colour experience, while she remains within the black and white prison. But this looks like a form of cheating that allows her to effectively escape from her black and white world, and does nothing to resolve the question of the difference, or lack of it, between scientific knowledge and direct experience.

Schier discusses the role of visual imagery in scientific conceptions, for instance the visualisation of the benzene ring as a snake swallowing its tail. She speculates that lack of such imagery, which itself derives from experience, not necessarily visual experience, of the external world may be necessary for the full development of scientific concepts.

However,the main theme of Schier’s paper is that scientific representations are fragmented whereas perceptions are a whole. She takes various examples to show that it would be an enormous task to provide the information that perception provides from the piece by piece scientific examination of a simple collection of objects. Schier speculates that the visual cortex has resources that allow it to describe colour in a way that cannot be achieved by external scientific analysis.

5.)

The Myths We Live By

Mary Midgley

Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group) (2003) ISBN 0-415-30906-9

This book is interesting for its criticism of modern scientific thinking, a criticism which has come more centre stage since the book was published. Early on in her book, Midgley criticises the dualism of treating mind and body as separate entities. The consequence of this is claimed to be a tendency to favour one over the other, with modern scientific thinkers feeling compelled to favour the body and ignore the mind. She claims that our notion of scientific rationality is based on 17^th century physics. She notes that while the methods of this type of physics are no longer central to modern physics, which has at its heart randomness or acausality, biologists, sociobiologists and social scientists have often not yet got this message, and continue with mechanism-based thought patterns, in the believe that they are being true to physics. This in turn has led to a concentration on the microbiological at the expense of whole organisms. Midgley, as a philosopher, also takes a side-swipe at scientists who will have nothing to do with philosophy, but are in fact unconsciously enslaved by 17^th century philosophy.

She discusses the atomistic approach of much of science, the reductive approach of breaking things down into the smallest possible particles, and argues that there are limitations to this. A botanist who is asked to identify a plant will not be able to provide a satisfactory answer by breaking it down into sub-atomic particles. Even a reductionist orientated scientist such as Francis Crick cautions that what might seem hopelessly complex to physicists may have been the simplest thing for evolution, because it built on something that was already there. Midgley argues that there are many forms of reduction, and that the form chosen by researchers is likely to be determined by their intellectual outlook or scientific world view.

Midgley argues that a view that bases everything on the action of particles will have problems in dealing with history or accounts of everyday life. A sentence such as ‘George was allowed home from prison at last on Sunday’ is difficult to interpret. This is a series of social relations that would have to vanish in a completely reductive physical explanation. This physical explanation does not begin to convey the meaning of what is said in the sentence. For instance, the importance and implications of George’s coming home from prison has nothing much to do with the distance or route from the prison, or the type of transport used, and George himself is not recognised by physics, which does not have individuals.

Midgley says that because Descartes thought that physical particles operated in much the same way as machines, he reasons that anything made out of physical particles, including bodies, had to do the same. Descartes famously excluded the mind or soul from being part of a machine, but other philosophers and scientists were quick to do way with this distinction. Thomas Hobbes was one of the earliest in this respect. Physical explanations were deemed to be real, while subjective experience was only an ‘appearance’. Hobbes did not allow that there could be any objective facts about subjectivity, that an ’appearance’ could be a fact in the sense that our emotions and sensations are a fact to us.

Midgley goes on to examine the modern idea of epiphenomenalism, which claims that consciousness is a by-product of mental processes, and that it can have no influence on the working of the brain or mind. Midgley highlights the most important problem with this concept, which is the question as to why evolution should have selected for a feature that did not have any function.

The really surprising thing is that while epiphenomenalism is widely touted in consciousness studies, the evolution problem in epiphenomenalism is seldom discussed, even in books that devote a chapter to the relationship between consciousness and evolution. Midgley sees the whole idea as being a contrivance aimed at getting rid of consciousness, because it is impossible to connect consciousness and the body in the Descartes derived world picture.

Midgley further suggests that there is a social and historical context to the tendency to try and downplay the mind, and this was a wish on the part of some of the earlier thinkers to break away from the power of the Church. This has led to a general attitude that anything that can portray itself as downplaying the mind is classed as more scientific, and this is seen as accounting for the dominance of behaviourism and the virtual absence of consciousness studies during most of the 20^th century. Midgley particularly criticises behaviourism for not defining why it was ‘scientific’ to ignore the subjective aspect. She also remarks that its is unfortunate that the dogma of preferring the outside view has outlasted behaviourism as such. Midgley suggests that there is an essential conflict between atheism and the idea of mind/body separation. If there are no external spiritual forces then the subjective experience of something spiritual requires a physical explanation.

Midgley says that because Descartes thought that physical particles operated in much the same way as machines, he reasons that anything made out of physical particles, including bodies, had to do the same. Descartes famously excluded the mind or soul from being part of a machine, but other philosophers and scientists were quick to do way with this distinction. Thomas Hobbes was one of the earliest in this respect. Physical explanations were deemed to be real, while subjective experience was only an ‘appearance’. Hobbes did not allow that there could be any objective facts about subjectivity, that an ’appearance’ could be a fact in the sense that our emotions and sensations are a fact to us.

Midgley argues that a view that bases everything on the action of particles will have problems in dealing with history or accounts of everyday life. A sentence such as ‘George was allowed home from prison at last on Sunday’ is difficult to interpret. This is a series of social relations that would have to vanish in a completely reductive physical explanation. This physical explanation does not begin to convey the meaning of what is said in the sentence. For instance, the importance and implications of George’s coming home from prison has nothing much to do with the distance or route from the prison, or the type of transport used, and George himself is not recognised by physics, which does not have individuals.

Midgley goes on to examine the modern idea of epiphenomenalism, which claims that consciousness is a by-product of mental processes, and that it can have no influence on the working of the brain or mind. Midgley highlights the most important problem with this concept, which is the question as to why evolution should have selected for a feature that did not have any function.

The really surprising thing is that while epiphenomenalism is widely touted in consciousness studies, the evolution problem in epiphenomenalism is seldom discussed, even in books that devote a chapter to the relationship between consciousness and evolution. Midgley sees the whole idea as being a contrivance aimed at getting rid of consciousness, because it is impossible to connect consciousness and the body in the Descartes derived world picture.

Midgley further suggests that there is a social and historical context to the tendency to try and downplay the mind, and this was a wish on the part of some of the earlier thinkers to break away from the power of the Church. This has led to a general attitude that anything that can portray itself as downplaying the mind is classed as more scientific, and this is seen as accounting for the dominance of behaviourism and the virtual absence of consciousness studies during most of the 20^th century. Midgley particularly criticises behaviourism for not defining why it was ‘scientific’ to ignore the subjective aspect. She also remarks that its is unfortunate that the dogma of preferring the outside view has outlasted behaviourism as such. Midgley suggests that there is an essential conflict between atheism and the idea of mind/body separation. If there are no external spiritual forces then the subjective experience of something spiritual requires a physical explanation.

Midgley goes on to point out another contradiction apparent in psychological reductionism. On the one hand, the mind is supposed to be reduced to just the movement of particles, or mechanics. At the same time, another and contradictory idea is prevalent. Subjects’ apparent or claimed motives are reduced to underlying and usually less worthy motives. However, the mechanical theory claims to debunk the whole idea of internally sustained motives, so on the basis of that theory, the unworthy underlying motives are no more plausible as being causal, than the apparent and worthy motives. Despite this apparent contradiction, the two methods are often combined in reductionist approaches. Midgley accepts that underlying motives are often there, but criticises a tendency to apply the idea indiscriminately out of the pleasure of showing up other people, and extending a guiding theory into other areas.

In this book, and in an earlier book, ‘Evolution as a Religion’ (1985), Midgley criticises the deceptive use of language in sociobiology. She is particularly critical of what she sees as the misuse of the word ‘selfish’ as in ‘selfish gene’. She says that this fails to distinguish between the biological sense of the word referring to the deterministic behaviour of genes in the human body, and the lay use of the word, which implies a moral/social fault in the person exhibiting selfish behaviour. There is an implied discovery of underlying motives in humans, while the general reader may not notice that the theory also insists that personal and subjective motives, underlying or otherwise, are not the basis of behaviour in the first place.

Further to this, Midgley looks at the whole question of actions and motives. The common sense or folk psychology approach is that we act in response to conscious thinking and to conscious purposes or motives. However, the reductionist approach is that this is an illusion or mistake, and that we act in response to some physical process that we are unaware of. The core idea is that humans are never active agents, but only passive responders to physical processes.

She examines in particular Dawkin’s notion that we are robots or survival machines programmed to preserve genes. She says that Dawkins’s language implies that while the human is a robot, the gene is a real motivated agent. She argues that if humans are not accepted as being agents, then the concept of agency should vanish from the description, whereas with Dawkins it may have been transferred to the genes. Similarly, she criticises Colin Blackemore for denying human agency, and then transferring the agency to the brain. In his scheme humans are somehow a separate passive entity driven by an agent brain. Blackemore refers to a causal chain running back to the origin of life and to atoms, but Midgley says this should really be a network penetrating every aspect of life. Midgley thinks that the motive behind these ideas is the idea that causal reasoning should not embrace the idea of purpose.

Relative this, she reminds us that Descartes ideas worked because they retained the soul to take care of the mind/consciousness. When the soul was removed from the model, it became difficult to make the model work except by the implausible shifts that permeate much of modern biology and consciousness studies. David Bohm remarks on the same problem in his discussion of consciousness, remarking that few people noticed that the removal of the soul from Descartes model had left a gap that was difficult to fill. Midgley thinks that modern reductionists try to eliminate conscious and purposive action by the human agent, because it implies to them a Cartesian and supernatural soul.

Midgley, by contrast, wants to bring conscious thought into the physical world as a normal causal factor in the behaviour of the human species. Subjective experiences are suggested to be as real as stones. The evolution of conscious thought as a property of humans is explained by its usefulness in producing well judged actions. This does not propose a soul that is cut off from material influences, but a consciousness that is influenced by the rest of the environment.

Midgley questions why interest in subjective states is often considered to be unscientific. She thinks there is a confusion in that many think that the study of subjectivity is itself subjective. This is likened to thinking that a study of folly is itself foolish, or that a study of evil is evil, or in Dr. Johnson’s terms that fat oxen have to be driven by fat men.

A more sophisticated problem is the difficulty by definition of knowing anything about other people’s subjective states. However, she suggests that this research is not as hopeless as sometimes suggested, because we are both aware of our own subjective states, and a sufficiently good judge of other people’s states, for this skill to be adaptively useful. At the same time, there is the dangerous notion, as in behaviourism, that a research method that only looks at the objective evidence somehow comes to be more scientific, despite the fact that it is suppressing part of the available evidence.

Midgley criticises much of sociobiology for promoting a false form of Darwinism, derived from Herbert Spencer, who adapted Darwin’s ideas to promote 19^th century American capitalism. This stresses the role of competition and suggests that social feeling are an illusion/hypocrisy. Midgley objects that Darwin himself, who regarded ‘social instincts’ as an important factor, and the evidence of the natural world, both give a much bigger part to cooperation or at least interdependence even for non-humans. The biologist, J.B.S. Haldane, demonstrated how self-sacrifice or risk taking for the benefit of others could be adaptive, if it benefited individuals who shared one’s genes, for instance relatives in the same group of hunter-gatherers. At the same time, Midgley feels evolution applies to humans as much as to non-humans whereas many social scientists have erected a species barrier against evolution, because of the unacceptable implications of the Herbert Spencer version of evolution.

Reference:-

Midgley, M. - Evolution as a Religion - Routledge (1985) ISBN 0-415-27833-3 (pbk)

6.)

Science & Poetry

Mary Midgley

Routledge (2001) ISBN13: 9-78-0-415-37848-2

Midgley attacks what she regards as the excessively atomistic or reductionist approach of much of modern science, and in particular, Richard Dawkin’s focus on genes. She remarks that DNA is an inert molecule that would have done nothing in a world that had no organisms. DNA is produced by the cells of organisms, and is only meaningful in relation to its cellular environment. She criticises a tendency in modern thinking, to endow genes with a spontaneous and magical power of their own, and to give them a kind of patriarchal role in the nucleus of the cell. Dawkins describes the genes as issuing orders to docile cells, but Midgley suggests that Steven Rose’s description of genes being involved in a dynamic exchange with their cellular environment is more realistic.

She argues that the idea of people being directed by inert molecules of DNA makes sense from a third-person point of view but not from a first person point of view. She sees the real flaw in this view as the fact that our conscious life involves effort. She suggests that the link between consciousness, effort and thought has been overlooked in a large part of recent consciousness literature.

The behaviourists excluded consciousness from science during most of the 20^th century. The collapse of their scheme has led to the re-emergence of consciousness as a subject of scientific study. But just removing the academic taboo on talking about consciousness has not resolved the problem, because the conceptual framework of science still finds it difficult to integrate consciousness. The outcome has been an unsatisfactory attempt to squeeze it into the margin of neurobiology.

Science from the 17^th century onwards had thought in terms of a world of objects. Descartes separated the world into the material and the spiritual, but very soon others began to concentrate just on the material, and to downplay the spiritual side, which bit-bybit came to be regarded as mere foolishness by the scientific community. This led on to the doctrine of determinism, the idea that if one could simply know the position of all the particles in the universe, one could determine everything that would happen in the future. In practise, many took the view that they could predict many aspects of the future without knowing absolutely everything. The advent of quantum theory in the early 20^th century demonstrated that the idea of complete or even limited determinism was false, but Midgley notes that this news has yet to get through to many biologists and social scientists. Determinism excludes the possibility of freewill. She thinks that much of the confidence of biologists and others in rejecting freewill is based on an assured belief in 19^th century determinism, which science, as it has developed since 1900, has shown to be false. The deterministic view became strongly entrenched in the 19^th century, and has remained so in popular and much scientific thinking, although physics, from which it originally derived has abandoned the notion.

Midgley particularly criticises the widespread approach of epiphenomenalism that holds that consciousness/qualia/subjective experience are by-products of brain processing and can have no causal efficacy. What is curious is that most people who have this view do not think there is anything other than the physical world, yet at the same time, they classify mind or consciousness as non-physical. Another approach sometimes seen in the literature is that consciousness is not important, is ‘no big thing’, and that researchers should get on with just doing neuroscience.

Midgley takes the view that many commentators have essentially split minds. On the one hand, a scientific view that everything is determined with no freewill or conscious efficacy, and on the other, a practical day-to-day approach, where thoughts and emotions shape our actions. Midgley asks why reductionist scientists bother to form arguments and write books, if they belief that conscious effort can have no effect. Their own behaviour seems to contradict their often asserted beliefs.

She also points out that this concept of consciousness presupposes a one way causation, an effect that does not cause anything to happen, which if it were the case, would be unique in physics. She criticises what she perceives as the illogicality of a reductionist writer such as Colin Blakemore who argues that the brain is designed on the basis of functional utility, but produces the feeling that we control our actions. Midgley points out that evolution would not select for the production of something that had no advantageous effect on behaviour.

Midgley argues that the epiphenomenalist view is unconvincing even in terms of the practise of science itself. Skinner argued that thinking was the result of behaviour, but Midgley says that this involves a false time-ordering. A scientist thinking about a problem might go on to execute various forms of behaviour, such as looking up references, and making phone calls, where the behaviour is a direct result of the thinking, and not the other way round.

Blackemore has argued, along with others, that there is no distinction between conscious and non-conscious processes. Midgley counters that this is again effectively denied by the practise of the scientific community, where scientists are eager to take credit for papers and discoveries, which they would not deserve if their actions were really non-conscious, predetermined or automatic, as opposed to something deserving reward.

The original image for epiphenomenalism was the steam whistle on a locomotive, which made a lot of noise, but did not drive the locomotive. On the basis of the part played by thought in scientific research, Midgley suggests that conscious thinking should rather be compared to the railway timetable that spells out the intentions of the people involved in the operation of the railway.

Midgley argues that the modern consciousness studies distinction between the cognitive area and the phenomenal area of subjective experience is over stated, because we also have subjective experience related to our thinking, so the two things cannot be held in separate watertight compartments.

She also criticises the view of the self as something isolated. She sees it as interconnected with the body, society and the rest of the world. She advocates that mind and body are not distinct items, but should be regarded as complementary aspects of the same person. She sees the 17^th century split between consciousness and body as the thing that creates the present scientific/philosophical problem with consciousness. She argues that it is in fact not subjective but objective, to accept that our sentience or consciousness is a central fact in our world. She criticises the idea that we are controlled by our bodies, because this argument presupposes that we are in some way distinct from our bodies, and in some mysterious way excluded from our bodies. She argues that even amongst those who strongly deny the idea of a separate spirit or free consciousness, the Descartian idea of a separate body and spirit persists. She suggests that the ready acceptance of the idea of computer hardware and software as an accurate image for brain and mind represents an implicit acceptance of this idea.

The usual argument that any concept that is not crudely reductionist is mere folk psychology often rests on analogies with folk physics, where the sun actually alters its height above the Earth during the course of a day, and tables are solid, rather than composed of minute particles oscillating in a vacuum. Midgley points out that when we learn such facts, it is relatively easy to accommodate them in our model of physical life. But when we learn, or think we learn, that conscious efforts have no efficacy, this produces an irreconcilable conflict between ‘science’ and our actual experience.

Midgley argues that there is now a contradiction in the way that science views other forms of studies. For a long time, there had been an ‘imperialist’ drive for science to subsume all other types of study. However, Popper drew the definition of science so tightly that this became impossible. Here again the implications of this had not been fully accepted by the scientific community. Midgley argues that social, educational, economic, political and other external causes, and not just neural activity, must be brought into the account. She feels that the idea of universal physical laws cannot be applied to such questions as explaining the French Revolution, but this is nevertheless a valid subject of study. The 19^th and early 20^th century quest for scientific type laws governing areas such as history is deemed to have been largely unsuccessful. Midgley defends the disciplined scrutiny of evidence found in a subject such as history, against the accusations of critics such as Skinner that it was merely an amateurish collection.

She further argues that many human activities can only be understood in terms of the point of view or intentions of the participants. She uses the example of a game of football, which makes no sense in terms of physics, but complete sense in terms of its participants. A similar example is the concept of money, which has no meaning in physics, but is understood in terms of the intentions of people who use money

Midgley’s criticism of recent approaches to consciousness and scientific method in general looks justified in many instances. On the other hand, she does not really go very far towards an actual theory of consciousness. Even mainstream thinkers have moved somewhat more towards taking into account the body, the environment and social factors in understanding consciousness, but there still seems to be a requirement for an actual theory of physical processes, which is not attempted here.