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Mainstream 101.) Facing backwards on the problem of consciousness - Daniel Dennett - Criticism of David Chalmers 2.) The why of consciousness - Valerie Hardcastle - On David Chalmers 1.) Facing backwards on the problem of consciousness Daniel Dennett Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3, No. 1, 1996, pp. 4-6 The philosopher, Daniel Dennett, has been possibly the most successful exponent of an explanation of consciousness that relies entirely on classical physics and existing neuroscience. His influence has been such that some commentators on consciousness refuse to stray beyond his ideas or the ideas very closely aligned to Dennett. In this article short article he attacks David Chalmer’s position on consciousness, and in particular his distinction between the ‘easy’ problems of brain function and the hard problem of consciousness. He adopts a favourite strategy, which is to compare the views of his opponents to those of the 19th century vitalist, who believed that life forms were so different from inorganic matter that the difference could only be explained by some form of vital force. He claims that a 19th century vitalist might have argued that it would be possible to scientifically all the things that life forms do, such as reproduction, metabolism, immune systems etc, but still something would have been left out, and this would be the mysterious life force. It is possible to see a certain sleight of hand in this approach. Vitalism is a stock example of an exploded idea in the history of science, and any surviving believe in vitalism is regarded as ridiculous. However, given the state of knowledge at the time when it was propounded vitalism looked quite plausible. The idea is ridiculous now because a very detailed science has been developed to explain how living organisms operate. Dennett gives a list of what life forms do, and it is true that these are all well explained by modern biology. He does not provide a comparable list for what brains are supposed to do and this allows in a certain element of fudging. If we made a list such as receiving various forms of data, processing the data, deciding to store some of the data in long-term memory, storing it there, deciding how to respond and implementing the necessary motor functions. Neuroscience is a good way towards these explanations. Moreover it is easy to agree that various combinations of DNA, proteins, various ions and electrical potentials could achieve all the brain functions that are not yet fully understood. But consciousness is not really on the list of brain functions. In neuroscientific terms it is wholly possible for the brain with the body to perform all the known without any help from consciousness. Whereas functions such as receiving and responding to data and commanding movements can be explained in terms of matter and electricity, and are nowadays seen to be performed by machines of metal, silicon etc and powered by electricity. By contrast, nothing in our quite extensive knowledge of electricity, proteins and ions suggests they can combine together to produce consciousness, at least not if we stick to classical physics. In this respect, the very advances of science imposes constraints on scientific ideas. I the heyday of now mocked vitalism it might have seemed to propose that protein could act directly produce consciousness, but our present knowledge makes this impossible. In the next section of his article, he considers a scientist, who rather than being bothered by the qualia of raw experience as a Chalmers type hard problem, decides that the process of perception is a hard problem. Dennett then points out that by examining the whole process from retina, through the various stages of the visual cortex and association cortex, perception can be fully understood. Of course the same arguments apply as did with vitalism. Although neuroscience has some serious problems with perception, in principle there is no reason why a protein computer should not achieve perception. Of course again, the information content involved in perception whether in men or machines has no need of an experiential element, but a problem starts when we try to get to the electric protein machine to produce consciousness. The final stage of Dennett’s article reads like metaphysics or a simple profession of faith. Dennett gives a list of experiences and suggests that when the functional part of the experience is taken away there is nothing left. The brain function supposedly provides a whole explanation. There is a slight element of fudging in his list as he does not mention any raw sensation qualia such as the classic example of the colour red, but deals rather with fairly complex mental activities. In some cases it is debatable whether these are qualia. He may be right in thinking the act of concentrating (one of his list) is mainly function rather than experience. A better example on his list is the ‘vivid recollection of the death of a loved one.’ In this case it seems entirely possible for a machine to have a full audio visual store of the unfortunate scene, with absolutely no experience of sorrow, the informationally thus being subtracted as Dennett puts it. At the other end of the spectrum with raw qualia we are not aware of any functional side as we may be when we concentrate of think about a scene in our past, there is simply experience with nothing there to be subtracted. There is another shortcoming in Dennettäs approach and much of the classical reductionist approach. Our perceptions are mocked and classified as illusions or folk psychology and compared to believes such as vitalism or a flat Earth at the centre of the universe. What is not mentioned is that these believes became less popular because science could explain the perceptions we did have. It is a plausible first impression that the Earth is on average flat, but there are fairly easy ways to demonstrate that this is false, and sensible people stop beleiving it. No such clarification of why we perceive qualia have been advanced. Mainstream players such as Dennett can only provide ridicule. 2.) The Why of Consciousness: A Non-issue for Materialists Valerie Hardcastle Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3, No. 1, 1996, pp. 7-13 The article aims to discuss the differences between those the author terms materialists and those she terms sceptics in understanding the scientific enterprise. In fact much of the article is taken up by the differences of view between the author and David Chalmers. Hardcastle starts by dividing the world into those who expect a physical basis for consciousness and those who don’t. However, this is not really an accurate description of her position as she classes those, presumably including quantum consciousness theorists, who seek a fundamental property as an explanation of consciousness as outside the physical camp. This is to some extent true of Chalmers but it is clearly untrue of quantum theorists who are looking at the fundamental physical level of the universe. Hardcastle discusses the situation in which hypothetically she has discussed the component of the brain that produces consciousness. She says that Chalmers would say that she had not explained why this component produced consciousness. At this point Hardcastle offers an analysis of the problem of identity theory, which is a problem of level. Identity theory seems to want to take a piece of protein and make it identical to consciousness. We can do this is we are allowed to say that it is just a given property of the universe that a particular piece is consciousness. But in physics as its been understood to date given properties do not arise at complex levels such as protein but only at the quantum level, with properties such as mass, charge and spin and the different strengths of the forces of nature. Hardcastle stresses how the given properties of the universe are few and basic. The rest of science ultimately depends on these key ingredients, a point elsewhere made by Chalmers. Hardcastle’s logic becomes difficult to follow beyond this point, given what she has said in the early part of her article. She seems to copy the misleading style of Dennett’s arguments. She posits the example of a so-called water mysterian, who has absorbed a full description of the composition of the water molecule and its capacity to bind with other molecules but still thinks that the true property of water has not been explained. This is presumably supposed to equate to someone who is told that a piece of protein is conscious but thinks some explanation is lacking. But there is a problem of level here. The water mysterian has been told about the atomic components of water and their electromagnetic interaction. This is the most basic level, which Hardcastle herself has explained as the level given properties or brute facts can be found. By contrast no such explanation has been offered for ‘identical to consciousness bit of protein. Following on this the author, like Dennett, takes a tilt at the foolish vitalists, who having learnt all the mechanisms by which organisms operate thinks there is still something missing from the description of what makes an organism physically alive. What is supposed to be the comparison to be the comparison with the piece of protein for which no explanation of its consciousness has been offered. The comparison is more with a nineteenth century scientists who might the outside of an animal with no detailed knowledge of its functioning and had simply decreed that there was no life force in it. Once again it is problem of level. The early scientists explanation is not a sufficiently low or reduced level and this is also the problem with the protein. Hardcastle, however, appears to condemn anyone who is not prepared to accept her haphazard approach to physical levels as a mysterian. P. Hardcastle finishes her article with a list of various successes in neuroscience, for instance showing that equilibrium in neurons depends on the influx and efflux of ions. The point is that even when this was not yet understood it was entirely reasonable to believe that an electrical charge mechanism might be involved. Similarly, when scientists were looking for the mechanism of heriditary processes in the early and mid 20th centuries they could be virtually certain that this involved some fairly small chemical or physical process within the body.On the other hand with consciousness we know nothing about the nature of the thing we are looking, and we cannot even agree what, if anything it does. What we know about electricity makes it very unlikely that it could produce a property not seen elsewhere in the universe. The membrane of the neuron did not present anything like the same problem, it merely a needed some already understood physical mechanism to move it around. The author nowhere mentions the possibility of quantum conscious. Possibly it is seen as too ridiculous to be mentioned. But perhaps there is a more interesting aspect. In this article and many others like it, while we are promised that science will soon clear away the problem of consciousness, there is at the same time a curious lack of scientific curiosity, and a certain arrogance to the effect that their version of materialism or view of the physical world is the only possible one, with any other view being mysterian, which for anyone who reads consciousness literature can be seen not to be the case. This is accompanied by an unwillingness to dig into the nature of the cell, beyond the most basic explanation of the neuron/synapse communication idea, with the neuron wrongly seen as an irreducible unit, a bit like the 19th century atom, and even more striking an absolute refusal to take any physics below the classical level seriously. |
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