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Mainstream 1


Mainstream Theories:  1


1.) Consciousness Explained - Dennett

2.) Consciousness: An Introduction - Susan Blackmore

3.) Dennett & the Deep Blue Sea

4.) How could conscious experience effect brains - Velmans

5.) Facing backwards on the problem of consciousness - Dennett

6.) The Why of Consciousness - Valerie Hardcastle






Consciousness Explained

Daniel Dennett

Penguin   ISBN 0-14-012867-0

This has been possibly the most influential book on consciousness since discussion of the subject revived about 20 years ago. Apart from the fact that Dennett is undoubtedly a better writer than many of his peers, the main reason for his success appears to be that he offers an explanation for consciousness that does not require any adjustment of an essentially 19th century scientific paradigm. Critics of this paradigm have nicknamed Dennett’s book ‘Consciousness Explained Away’.


The Multiple Drafts Model
The Multiple Drafts model (MDM) is the core of the Dennett thesis about consciousness. The model assumes parallel processing and continuous editorial revision of data in the brain. For instance, the five-a-second saccades of the eyes are edited out in our conscious perception of the scene. The editorial processes extend over large fractions of a second, during which amendments can be made.

The MDM argument claims that there is only one discrimination in the brain, and the initial discrimination is not passed on to some notional discriminator or Cartesian theatre. Dennett thinks that the discriminations are precisely located in time and space, but they do not coincide with the onset of consciousness of their content.

Most modern students of consciousness would probably agree that the Cartesian theatre is a delusion. However, Dennett builds on this to suggest that anyone who thinks that consciousness emerges at a particular time must believe it emerges spatially within the Cartesian theatre. He never discusses the possibility of emergence spread out across the whole or across large areas of the brain. The reader is however pressured into thinking that this must be the case.

False Analogy?
At one stage, Dennett discusses the Kolers version of the Phi experiment. This is seen as central to Dennett’s theory of consciousness. In the first phase of the experiment, it is shown that if two small spots are lit in quick succession, only a single spot will be seen to move back and forth. The next stage was to ask what would happen if the two spots were of different colours, say red and green. It was found, when this was tested that the red spot started to move, and then turned green in mid-journey.

In attempting to explain this result, Dennett produces an analogy based on his MDM. He points out that in modern academia articles are often circulated to the more important members of their audience in various slightly different drafts. Later on, the article will be officially published in some learned journal, but by then most of the key members of the intended audience will have read it in one or other of the earlier draft versions. So the official recorded date of publication is some while after it was read by most of the intended audience. Dennett contends that there wasn’t a date of publication but that publication is spread out over the various drafts. He sees this as analogous to consciousness, with consciousness of an event is spread out over the multiple versions of the event existing in the mind.

But is this really true? Even at the level of the publication of an article the analogy does not really hold. We happen to live in a culture where publication of a book or an article by a mainstream publishing house or a learned journal is important in terms of career, status and self-esteem. But this is a cultural feature and as such ephemeral. Through much of human history this would have been a meaningless or incomprehensible process. It is perhaps necessary to go back to the original meaning of publishing i.e. to make public, which ultimately means to transfer the article from the private domain of the writers mind to the public domain of another mind or minds. Even this is a big step in gauging the quality and appropriateness of a work. So in the strict sense of the word publication is the first time the work is shown to another mind. The same could probably be said of consciousness, the final ‘official’ version of event which might be consigned to long term memory may be preceded by other versions, but in the publishing analogy, consciousness would happen with the very first version.

Dennett v. the Evidence
The whole direction of Dennett’s thesis is to some extent at variance with brain scanning studies in the 1990’s. These indicated that specific areas of the brain such as the dorsolateral prefrontal were particularly active during conscious choice (Passingham 1993 & 1997), (1&2) (Goldman-Rakic 1992), (3) while the same area is less active during routine tasks (Ingvar & Philipson 1977) (4). Studies in the nineties also suggest that the dorsolateral may be involved in active suppression or inhibition of impulses coming from the parietal and other areas of the brain. (Goldman-Rakic, 1997) (5), (Fuster, 1989 & 1995) (6&7), (Frith, 1991 & 1992), (8&9) (Posner & Raichle, 1994) (10) (Feinberg et al, 1992) (11). These studies could be said to go against the spirit of the Dennett thesis in highlighting areas of the brain involved with conscious choice or suppression of unwanted unconscious impulses, while other area produce such impulses or carry out habitual tasks without much conscious involvement.

Chapter Eight of Dennett's book launches into a lengthy and inconclusive debate about the production of spoken words and sentences. However the purpose of this is not to discuss linguistics as such, but to look at the origins of all intentional actions, of which speech is only an example. This isn’t really a discussion on a level playing field, because Dennett, burdened by his anti-Cartesian luggage, can’t allow for any conscious direction of actions. He makes a reasonable case for the idea that elements of trivial or spontaneous speech or actions might be self organised by widespread groups of neurons. He does, however, admit that sometimes we are conscious of a complicated process of reasoning leading to a decision. However, he decides that this process is so rare that he will apparently leave it out of account. Many might disagree as to reasoning being as rare as he makes out, but this is not the main point. It is apparent that for human culture these periods of more complex reasoning are disproportionately important, and are also brain activity most definitely involving consciousness. This makes it difficult to take seriously a theory of consciousness that leaves these key processes out of account, as being inconvenient irrelevances.

In many ways the weakest part of the book is the section that looks to be meant to be the culmination of Dennett’s thesis. This is the section at the end of Part 2. This follows a lengthy piece on various theories concerning the functioning of the brain. The processes of the brain are variously described by Dennett as virtual or Joycean machines, the former being an analogy to the virtual worlds found in computer systems. This discussion contains barely any direct reference to consciousness. At the end of this, Dennett himself entitles the final section of Part 2, ‘But is this a theory of consciousness?’ Dennett does not in fact answer this question. He simply declares the brain systems as he has described them to be conscious by fiat, saying:

“Anyone or anything that has such a virtual machine as its control system is conscious in the fullest sense, and is conscious because it such a virtual machine.”

He does not advance any reasoning for why these systems could not function very well without consciousness, but resorts to intimidating and ridiculing the dissenting reader rather than any process of argument, comparing objections to ‘A Tibetan prayerwheel’ simply because they have been repeated so often, and saying:

“Oh can you? (imagine a non-conscious version of this machine)”

Well, a moment thought, if the reader isn’t too intimidated, would produce the answer, yes I can. Most people in the modern world are familiar with apparently non-conscious machines that perform impressive feats that would have required human mental activity until the middle of the last century.

Having ridiculed the reader Dennett then takes refuge in the classical materialist fall back position of ‘oh, it’s so complex, there’s bound to be something in there that proves the materialist theory, saying

‘how do you know you imagined ‘all that’ in sufficient detail, and with sufficient attention to all the implications.’

This appears to be sleight of hand. The preceding section was all discussed in terms of our existing knowledge of neuroscience and computers. The implication of the passage was that this was exposition of everything that was known and relevant, and that the Dennett theory of consciousness was based on that. But the quote here suggests that he is holding back on some level of detail and knowledge not known to the reader. Of course, we don’t actually know everything about the brain, but there is no guarantee that what we don’t know will turn out to support the Multiple Drafts Model, and no guarantee that it will not support an alternative theory of consciousness.

Dennett uses the same sleight of hand elsewhere in his discussion of zombies. In order to focus on consciousness, philosophers sometimes look at what it would be like if there existed zombies that were in every way identical to humans, except that they were not conscious. In respect of this Dennett is logically correct in stating that if a zombie were exactly the same as a human it would have to be conscious, because it would contain the physical basis of consciousness. However, this is really a way of deflecting people from the main point of the argument, which is that everything done by the brain as described by contemporary neuroscience could be done by a zombie. The card trick is to make us forget the difference between what we now know about the brain, and what we might know about it in the future.

Blindsight
Towards the back of his book Dennett tucks away his commentary on the phenomena of blindsight. This subject looks at first glance like a peripheral curiosity, but in fact it is potentially fatal to the entire Dennett argument that consciousness is nothing different from the brain as described in neuroscience text books.

Blindsight occurs in patients who have a scotoma, a blind area in a part of the field of vision. These patients have no conscious awareness of sight in this area. However, tests show that they do have a degree of unconscious perception of objects and movement in this area. It is surmised that there are separate conscious and unconscious routes to the visual cortex. What it demonstrates, however, is that conscious and unconscious processes are essentially different, something which Dennett’s Multiple Drafts theory denies.

To try to get round this, Dennett posits a 'superblindsighter', who has been trained to such a degree that his accuracy in the observation of objects and movement within the scotoma is as good as a normal sighted person. Then it is suggested that the patients vision would be identical to the normally sighted person’s vision.

The weakness of this argument is not that it sounds rather improbable, but that it does not get rid of the problem of the existing blindsighters. Their experience is totally different from people with conscious vision, to such an extent that it can be difficult to get them to participate in the tests, because it is so obvious to them that they can’t see anything. People in this state would continue to exist, and remain in the scientific record even if the Dennett super blindsighters were created. For the ordinary blindsighters, there is a clear difference between conscious experience, or rather lack of it, and unconscious ability.

Dennett also looks at the well known thought experiment, of Mary, the neuroscientific expert on colour vision who learns everything there is to know about the science of colour vision, while being incarcerated in a black and white room. At the end of many years, she is let out to have the experience of actual colours.

In looking at this Dennett employs an argument advanced by the philosopher Paul Churchland, which is supposed to support Dennett’s view, but in reality exposes the fallacy of his approach. Churchland says that Mary knowing everything means everything that could be known, not everything that is known in neuroscience today. Knowing everything is tantamount to knowing the conscious experience of colour. This is true so far as it goes, but appears to nullify the thought experiment as originally proposed. If Mary has had the experience of colour, and we are excluding dualist/supernatural intervention, which would be the case with Dennett and Churchland, the part of the brain that produces the colour qualia must have been activated. This applies just as much, whether the activation is a result of external data, or as seems more likely, direct brain stimulation as in the Penfield brain mapping experiments. However, the whole point of the thought experiment was how Mary would react if she had just absorbed data and not had the experience of colour.

References:-

(1)  Passingham, R. (1993)  The Frontal Lobes and Voluntary Action  Oxford University Press

(2)  Passingham, R. (1997)  Functional Organisation of the Motor System  Human Brain Function

(3)  Goldman-Rakic et al, 1992  The prefrontal cortex and internally generated motor acts  Current Opinion Neurobiology, 2, pp. 830-5

(4)  Ingvar, D. & Philipson, L. (1977)  Distribution of blood flow during motor ideation and motor performance  Annals of Neurology, 2 pp. 230-

(5)  Goldman-Rakic et al (1997)  Prefrontal Pathology in Schizoprenia  Schizophrenia Bulletin, 23, pp. 437-58

(6)  Fuster, J. (1989)  The Prefrontal Cortex

(7)  Fuster, J. (1995)  Memory in the Cerebral Cortex  MIT Press

(8)  Frith, C. (1991)  Willed Action in the Prefrontal Cortex  Proceedings of the Royal Society London (B), 244, pp. 241-6

(9)  Frith (1992)  The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Schizoprenia

(10)  Posner & Raichle (1994)  Images of Mind  W.H. Freeman and Company

(11)  Feinberg et al (1992)  Two alien hand syndromes  Neurology, 42, pp. 19-24





Consciousness: An introduction

Susan Blackmore

Hodder & Stoughton

ISBN  0 340 809094

This is a readable summary of the various mainstream ideas on consciousness that have been developed over the last twenty years. Although it is  not the intention of the author, the clear and relatively brief exposition of the main theories brutally exposes logical weaknesses that can sometimes be obscured by hundreds of pages of learned detail. In particular, the book is very much in thrall to Daniel Dennett and his Multiple Drafts model of consciousness, and even mainstream approaches to consciousness tend to be marked down if they depart from Dennett.

A further problem with Blackmore’s book is the undue attention given to the fact that the brain is subject to many forms of illusion. This seems to be intended to chip away at the reality of consciousness. Nowhere does Blackmore stop to ask whether it would be possible to have an illusion if one was not conscious in the first place. An insentient object such as a stone or a table would not be expected to have an illusion, and illusions in fact appear to be one of the functions of consciousness.

In the middle part of the book, there comes the now traditional materialist exercise of showing that the self is an illusion, comprised of the demarcation of the body from the rest of the world and the narrative history of the body as coded into the protein of the memory. The discussion neglects to mention that the self is not consciousness, but merely a part, albeit an important part, of the contents of consciousness, while with altered states of consciousness, in which the sense of self is obliterated, or merged with the world/nature/universe, there is still something that observes are also left out of account.

Blackmore tries to establish that consciousness is an evolved feature. The problem she fails to tackle here is that evolution selects for useful attributes and against useless ones, as a waste of energy. If consciousness is physical attribute, it has to tie up a certain amount of energy, probably rather a lot as the brain is notoriously energy intensive. But the whole direction of the rest of the book has been to the effect that consciousness does nothing, so why should evolution have selected for it. There is no attempt to answer this question or even an indication of an awareness that the question exists.

Later in her book, Blackmore draws on the work of the biologist Nicholas Humpherys. This leads first of all to the idea of consciousness of an emergent property. The classic example of an emergent property is the liquidity or wetness of water. This is not the property of individual hydrogen or oxygen atoms, but when these combine into a sufficient number of molecules at the right sort of temperature we find this property of wetness.

Consciousness might well fit into this category, but there is still a problem. When properties do emerge as in the case of wetness, it is then easy to trace them back to the original physical components, in this case the hydrogen and oxygen atoms, and the electromagnetic bonds that operate between them when they are configured into water molecules. The problem with consciousness is that it has not been possible to trace it back to physical components within the brain.

Another idea derived from Humphrey is that of self-reflexiveness. The idea is that humans at least evolved some form of inner eye to observe the brain’s activity as distinct from previous sensory organs that had been targeted at the outside world. The most serious problem is that there is no reason for this inner observation to create consciousness. The inner organ or nucleus could be non-conscious and report its findings to the other non-conscious parts of the brain by the usual synaptic connections. There is no requirement to have the extra physical property of consciousness.

Another concept that is developed is the idea that consciousness evolved as a function of the development of language. Again there are two problems with this approach. In the first place, there appears no reason to think that a non-conscious device could not master the processes of communication by means of language. The second is that even if we assume that consciousness was evolved to facilitate these processes, we still lack a description of its physical basis. Elsewhere Blackmore also touches on the idea that consciousness emerged from the use of symbols. Here again there is no explanation as to why the non-conscious use of symbols would not suffice as they do in effect for modern machines.

Quantum Weak-Link
The discussion of quantum consciousness is the weakest part of Blackmore’s book. She mentions only the Penrose/Hamerroff version of quantum consciousness. She starts off by describing how in sufficiently powerful mathematical systems propositions can be formulated, which can not be proved or disproved by the system, and that Penrose thinks that mathematical understanding in human brains derives from non-computable activity in the brain.

She describes how Penrose has proposed that there could be a different version of wave function collapse, when systems are isolated from the environment, and that this might give access to a non-computational judgemental process, and how Hameroff has identified the microtubules as a possible site for quantum coherent activity in the brain.

Blackmore then tries to refute Penrose/Hameroff as quickly as she can. First she turns to a ‘futurist’, Ray Kurzweil, who appears to argue that both computers and humans that can only estimate Gödel type propositions. This really misses the point that the human efforts are claimed to be non-computational, while those of the computer are of necessity based on algorithms.

Blackmore then tries to wrap the matter up by quoting a number of points from an article by the philosophers Grush and Churchland. However, she fails to mention a response by Penrose that answered the points quoted by Blackmore. As a result, a number of points repeated by Blackmore would appear to be in error.

She claims that the fact that microtubules exist throughout the body and can be disrupted by drugs without any resulting loss of consciousness disproves the theory. However, this ignores the fact that brain microtubules are different from those in the rest of the body, mainly because they are more stable. The drugs referred to have been shown not to disrupt brain microtubules. It is claimed that some anaesthetics do not act on microtubules, but this claim appears to exaggerate the still inprecise knowledge of where and with what intensity anaesthetics act in the brain.

Blackmore mentions the strongest argument against quantum consciousness, which is the rapid decoherence to be expected in the conditions of the brain. However, she does not mention Hameroff’s discussion of possible screening of the microtubules so as to allow the persistence of quantum coherence. Nor does she mention other theories that suggest that metabolic pumping of energy could sustain coherence under brain conditions.

In the closing part of the section on quantum consciousness the discussion compounds these errors and omissions by missing the whole point of the Penrose theory. Blackmore claims that even if there were quantum computing in the brain it would not brings us any nearer to understanding the basis of consciousness. However, Penrose himself argued that quantum computing, where wave function collapse involves interaction with the environment, would not of itself produce consciousness. Consciousness would only derive from his proposed objective reduction of the wave function giving access to the underlying and non-computable geometry of spacetime.





Dennett and the Deep Blue Sea

Burton Voorhees

Journal of Consciousness Studies:  vol 7 No 3 (2000)

The article attacks Dennett’s position relative to consciousness and self-consciousness, as outlined in his seminal book, ‘Consciousness Explained’, and as such it constitutes an attack on the mainstream orthodoxy of consciousness studies. Vorhees is aware of the strong attachment of the mainstream to Dennett, and suggests that any weaknesses in Dennett’s theory will indicate a weakness in the dominant computational/functionalist approach to consciousness.

Voorhees beliefs that Dennett describes a structure for the mind and then merely assumes rather than proves that such a mind would be conscious. He criticises Dennett’s style or at least his method of arguing, saying that Dennett claims that a lot of steps in his argument are big steps when they are only small steps, and then readers may not notice when he makes a huge leap of assumption.

Dennett’s thesis is that consciousness is nothing more than complex computation in the brain, with programming derived from genetics and nurture deemed to have the capacity for self-representation or self-consciousness. Events or moments of consciousness are deemed to be the winners in a Darwinian competition between different draft versions of perception. There is argued to be no internal witness, no central recgoniser of meaning. Further, the self is argued be a narritative centre of gravity, amongst of plethora of stories making up the history of the self. The self is regarded as a convenient fiction and an illusion based on a linguistic construct by Dennett. Meaning is somehow a result of the process of Darwinian selection amongst different drafts of reality. Personal subjectivity is argued to be an illusion, a theme common in reductionist  thinking. Voorhees points out that Dennett fails to say who it is that is experiencing the illusion.

Dennett starts from a traditionalist stand point that consciousness has to be studied from the third person point of view of the observer, rather than the first person experience of consciousness itself. To do this, he adopts what he calls the heterophenomenological method. Under this method one takes the results of first person introspection, and adopts a third person approach to them, studying them as if they were literary texts.

Dennett’s basic hypothesis is that human consciousness can be understood as the operation of a virtual machine using the parallel architecture or hardware of the brain. Dennett refers to this as a Joycean machine, recalling the meandering of consciousness depicted in James Joyce’s novels.

Voorhess, in particular, disputes Dennett’s claim that brains are like computers, because they were the inspiration for the design of computers. Voorhees claims that this is not the case. He says that Turing and von Neumann invented computers to practise deductive logic needed for mathematical computation. Recent research is stated to indicate that human brains do not work on this basis, and that it is in fact difficult for brains to learn the rules of logical inference. (Johnson-Laird 1983 & 1988) (1). Von Neumann himself is quoted as saying that the brain contained different logical structures from those normally used in logic and mathematics. Vorhees here criticises Dennett for taking as a premise, the thing he is seeking to prove, namely that brains are no different from computers. Vorhees also points out that on p. 215 of ‘Consciousness Explained’, which is really the core part of Dennett’s thesis, he appeals to personal introspection for evidence of a conscious mind, although elsewhere he argues against reliance on such first-person evidence.

Vorhees goes on to examine Dennett’s discussion of zombies. Dennett proposes the idea of a zimbo, a zombie with self-monitoring that provides it with higher-order informational states about its lower-order states. Dennett argues that the zimbo could convince itself that it was conscious. He says that if the zimbo was cross questioned sufficiently about why it was making the assertions that it did, it would come to think that it was conscious of these reasons. Vorhees thinks that Dennett deceives the reader by using words such as ‘reflecting’ and ‘knowing’. However, these are the very processes which constitute part of the consciousness experience, so in assuming that the zimbo has these, he is assuming the thing he is trying to prove. If Dennett had said that the zimbo fed back new information into its processing unit, to be compared with stored information, there would not appear to be any need to suppose that the zimbo was conscious.

Vorhees also criticises Dennett for appearing to dodge the binding problem, the puzzle as to how the many different components and sense systems that are the content of consciousness are perceived as a single whole. Dennett appears to argue that consciousness and self-consciousness arise from a whole series of individual neural processes or events, some of which come to have linguistic form which in turn creates the illusion of an author for the expereince. Vorhees points out that Dennett again does not explain who or what it is that is having an illusion.

Vorhees finally argues that self-consciousness tends to be mistaken for consciousness itself rather than just being a part of the contents of consciousness. This tendency appears elsewhere in the mainstream literature, where a naive deconstruction of the self into its narritave memory plus the distinction between body and the rest of the world is assumed to have explained away consciousness.

References:-

Johnson-Laird: Mental Models: Harvard University Press

Johnson-Laird: The Computer and the Mind:  Harvard University Press





Max Velmans

Dept. of Psychology. Goldsmith’s College

How could conscious experience affect brains?

Journal of Consciousness Studies, 9, No. 11, 2002, pp. 3-29

The article starts by reminding us that in everyday life, we have a working assumption that the conscious mind controls some of our actions. Conventional medicine tends to duck out of this issue, by referring to any conscious-type influences to brain functions, which begs the question as to the basis of consciousness. However, non-reductionist acccounts of consciousness have to contend with the apparent causal closure of universe. Science takes it for granted that the operation of physical systems can be entirely explained in physical terms. Against this however, there is a large body of evidence that states of mind can affect states of the body (Barber, 1984) (Sheikh et al, 1996) (Sheikh, 2001)(1-3). Conscious states are also known to influence a wide range of autonomic body functions such as heart rate, blood pressure, glucose levels and the functioning of the immune system (Baars & McGovern, 1996)(4). There is also the widespread incidence of the placebo effect in medecine, where the efficacy of new drugs is routinely measured against the placebo effect. The placebo effect has led onto a dispute within medecine as to whether placebo only effects how patients feel or whether it can effect their actual organic state, with studies favouring both views (Skrabanek & McCormik, 1989) (Wall, 1996) (Hashish et al, 1988)(5-7).
 
It is curious that Velmans at this point in the argument seems to assume that mind or consciousness has to be non-physical. If we see it as a physical property or process, it having an effect on the body does not conflict with the more fundamental concept of the causal closure of the physical universe. The problem seems to be the tendency of most commentators, including reductive scientists, to slip into the assumption that there is a non-physical mind or consciousness, and once this assumption has been made, convoluted arguments have to be dragged in to exclude the conscious mind from any influence on the body.

Studies by Sheikh et al, (1996) (8) are claimed to show imagery allowing mental control over body states such as heart rate. This leaves a need to explain how images can impact the physical matter of the brain. In medicine, this is often related to refocusing attention, but this does not in practise say much  about the physical processes that are going on.

In particular, it has been shown that the immune system can be modulated by the autonomic nervous system and by centrally produced peptides There are efferent pathways to the immune system that are influenced by inputs from the cortex and the limbic system. There is a complex two way flow between the brain and the immune system including exchanges of neuropeptides.

Velmans, like other commentators, points out that if one examines the functioning of the brain from a third person point of view, one can trace stimuli the whole way from input to output with no gap where consciousness might be needed. No subjective experience can be observed at work. It is the same if the brain is viewed as a computer or information system rather than a biological structure. Once a procedure has been specified there is no need for consciousness. The functions can be performed by a non-conscious machine.

Velmans also discusses how most of the actual activities of the brain, even ones which are associated with consciousness, do not actually involve conscious effort. One is not conscious of the mechanisms by which speech is produced. Similarly an image one is conscious of experiencing may change one’s heart rate, but one is not conscious of the process by which this happens. The pre-conscious speech processes are, however, allowed to sometimes be the result of conscious planning of what to say. Speech production is seen as a hierarchy going from meaning, to grammar to motor control. Things that haven’t been said before require more planning, and this new speech is characterised by hesitations not found in more habitual speech. Breathing pauses occur at the beginning and end of clauses or sentences, but thought pauses can occur in the middle of these. These may be associated with consciousness of mental effort. The same pattern is claimed to be true of unspoken thoughts. Velmans touches on the Libet experiment on readiness potentials, but like other commentators does not comment on the fact this focussed purely on a trivial preplanned action and not on longer term deliberation over decisions in which consciousness might be expected to have a more important role.
 
Velmans regards both dualist and materialist arguments as ridiculous. The dualists do not explain how a non-physical consciousness could act on the material world. The materialists are seen as trying to evade the question by ignoring clinical evidence that consciousness can effect body states.

Velmans is trying to reconcile the evidence that consciousness can have effects with the causal closure of the physical world. He says that in the individual's life, there is first person and third person knowledge. He takes an example. The first person experience of the image of a pleasant summers day may have a calming effect, leading to a slower pace of breathing. From the third person point of view of the external observer, there is only the slower breathing, or possibly some neural correlates of what has gone on, but not the actual experience of the summers day.

Velmans suggests studying the relationship between the neural correlate and consciousness. Velmans assumes that the conscious experience and the neural correlates represent the same thing, and encode the same information about it. The experience involves the image of the summers day and associated feelings such as lying on the grass. Velmans sees the correlates and the experience as the same information structure in two different formats. The difference is accounted for by the difference in observational arrangements as between experiencing and brain scanning. The two things are described as complimentary. For this, Velmans also uses the example of the doctor and patient. The patient experiences pain, the doctor observes the patient from the outside, plus the observation of scans instruments etc and the two accounts are complimentary in assessing the illness. Neither account is uniquely privileged over the other. Both are needed to give a complete account of what is going on. Velmans goes on from this to look at the question of physical/mental interactions and mental/physical interactions, which are described as mixed-perspective accounts.

Going back to the question of representations, Velman says that there are three types, representations of the external world, representations of the body, and representations of brain states such as thoughts. Velmans thinks that we don’t have the detail of the conscious workings, because for normal purposes we don’t need them. He points out that many skills that are learnt consciously are subsequently relegated to the unconscious part of the brain. Representations in our brains are not the actual world, but for practical purposes we treat them as if they were.

In the end, Velmans, like others before him, tries to have his cake and eat it, by trying to have efficacious consciousness at the same time as goodwill. He insists on the flimsy basis of the Libet experiment that all conscious thought and action is pre-processed, but he then doubles back and suggests that the unconscious processing is somehow free. But just in case we should think that unconscious agency was possible it is insisted that the unconscious processing is also deterministic, thus apparently contradicting the idea of being free.

References:-

(1)  Barber, T. (1984)  Changing bodily processes by suggestion   in Imagination and Healing, ed. A. Sheikh  Bayworld

(2)  Sheikh, A et al (1996)  Somatic consequences of consciousness

(3)  Sheikh, A. (2002)  Healing Images  Baywood

(4)  Baars & McGovern, K (1996)  Cognitive Views of Consciousness

(5)  Skrabanek, P. & McCormick, J. (1989)  Follies and Fallacies in Medicine  The Tarragon Press

(6)  Wall, P. (1996)  The placebo effect  in the Science of Consciousness, ed. M. Velmans  Routledge

(7)  Hashish et al (1988)  Reduction of postoperative pain  Pain, 83, pp. 303-11

Chalmers, D (1996)  The Conscious Mind  Poutledge & Kegan Paul

Lenneberg, E. (1967)  Biological Foundations of Language  Wiley

Libet, B. (1985)  Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will  Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 8, pp. 529-66

Libet, B. (1996)  Neural processes in the production of conscious experience

Libet, B. et al (1979)  Subjective referral of the timing for a conscious experience  Brain, 102, pp. 193-224

Searle, J. (1987)  Minds and brains without programmes  in Mindwaves ed. C. Blackemore and S. Greenfield  Blackwell

Searle, J. (1992)  The Rediscovery of the Mind  MIT Press

Searle, J. (1994a)  The problem of consciousness   in Consciousness in Philosophy and Cognitive Neuroscience, ed. A. Revosuo and M. Kamppinen   Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc.

Searle, J. (1994b)  Intentionality   in A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, ed. S. Guttenplan   Blackwell

Searle, J. (1997)  TheMystery of Consciousness  Granta Books

Velmans, M. (1990)  Consciousness, brain and the physical world  Philosophical Psychology, 3, pp. 77-99

Velmans, M. (1991a)  Is human information processing conscious  Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 14 (4) pp. 702-26

Velmans, M. (1993)  Consciousness, causality and complementarity  Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 16 (2), pp. 40916

Velmans, M. (1996a)  The Science of Consciousness  Routledge

Velmans, M. (1996b)  Consciousness and the causal paradox  Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 19 (3), pp. 538-42

Velmans, M. (1998)  Goodbye to reductionism   in The Second Tucson Discussion and Debates  ed, S. Hameroff et al  MIT Press

Velmans, M. (2000)  Understanding consciousness  Routledge

Velmans, M. (2001a)  A natural account of phenomenal consciousness   Consciousness and Communication, 34 (1&2), pp. 39-59

Velmans, M. (2001b)  A dialogue with Dan Dennett  http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk





Facing Backwards on the Problem of Consciousness

Daniel Dennett

Centre for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University

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 those whose ideas are very closely aligned to Dennett. In this article short paper, 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 vitalists, 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 explain 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 him an element of fudging. If we made a list of brain functions, 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 to data and implementing the necessary motor functions, then neuroscience takes us a good way towards these explanations. Moreover it is easy to agree that various combinations of DNA, proteins, ions and electrical potentials could achieve all the brain functions that are not yet fully understood.
 
But consciousness is not really on this list of brain functions. In neuroscientific terms, it is wholly possible for the brain with the body to perform all the known functions, 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. 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.

In the next section of his paper, 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. 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 information being subtracted to leave nothing, as Dennett puts it. At the other end of the spectrum with raw qualia, such as the colour red, there is nothing to subtract from the qualia, and it is this type of experience that needs to be explained.

There is another shortcoming in Dennett's approach. Our perceptions are mocked and classified as illusions or folk psychology, and compared to beliefs such as vitalism or a flat Earth at the centre of the universe. What is not mentioned is that these beliefs became less popular because science could explain the false perceptions that people had. 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. However, no such clarification of why we perceive qualia has been advanced. 





The Why of Consciousness: A Non-issue for Materialists

Valerie Hardcastle

Dept. of Philosophy, Virginia Polytechnic Institute

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 paper 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, if we are allowed to say that it is just a given property of the universe that a particular piece of protein 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’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.
 
There is a problem of level here. The water mysterian has been told about the atomic components of water and their electromagnetic interaction. This explanation is given at the most basic level, which Hardcastle herself has indicated as the level at which given properties or brute facts can be found. By contrast, no such explanation has been offered for ‘identical to consciousness' bits of protein, which are left to get on with it, as macroscopic pieces of protein.
 
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 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 for, 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 view of the physical world is the only possible one. 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, and even more striking an absolute refusal to take any physics below the classical level seriously.
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