Not Objectifiable

A bold draft paper from Tom Clark tackles the explanatory gap between experience and the world as described by physics. He says it’s all about the representational relation.

Clark’s approach is sensible in tone and intention. He rejects scepticism about the issue and accepts that there is a problem about the ‘what it is like’ of experience, while also seeking to avoid dualism or more radical metaphysical theories. He asserts that experience is not to be found anywhere in the material world, nor identified in any simple way with any physical item; it is therefore  outside the account given by physics. This should not worry us, though, any more than it worries us that numbers or abstract concepts cannot be located in space; experience is real, but it is a representational reality that exists only for the conscious subjects having it.

The case is set out clearly and has an undeniable appeal. The main underlying problem, I would say, is that it skates quite lightly past some really tough philosophical questions about what representation really is and how it works, and the ontological status of experience and representations. We’re left with the impression that these are solvable enough when we get round to them, though in fact a vast amount of unavailing philosophical labour has gone into these areas over the years. If you wanted to be unkind, you could say that Clark defers some important issues about consciousness to metaphysics the way earlier generations might have deferred them to theology. On the other hand, isn’t that exactly where they should be deferred to?

I don’t by any means suggest that these deferred problems, if that’s a fair way to describe them, make Clark’s position untenable – I find it quite congenial in general – but they possibly leave him with a couple of vulnerable spots. First, he doesn’t want to be a dualist, but he seems in danger of being backed into it. He says that experience is not to be located in the physical world – so where is it, if not in another world? We can resolutely deny that there is a second world, but there has to be in some sense some domain or mode in which experience exists or subsists; why can’t we call that a world? To me, if I’m honest, the topic of dualism versus monism is tired and less significant than we might think, but there is surely some ontological mystery here, and in a vigorous common room fight I reckon Clark would find himself being accused of Platonism (or perhaps congratulated for it) or something similar.

The second vulnerability is whether representation can really play the role Clark wants it to. His version of experience is outside physics, and so in itself it plays no part in the physical world. Yet representations of things in my mind certainly influence my physical behaviour, don’t they? The keyboard before me is represented in my mind and that representation affects where my fingers are going next. But it can’t be the pure experience that does that, because it is outside the physical world. We might get round this if we specify two kinds of representational content, but if we do that the hard causal kind of representation starts to look like the real one and it may become debatable in what sense we can still plausibly or illuminatingly say that experience itself is representational.

Clark makes some interesting remarks in this connection, suggesting there is a sort of ascent going on, whereby we start with folk-physical descriptions rooted in intersubjective consensus, quite close in some sense to the inaccessibly private experience, and then move by stages towards the scientific account by gradually adopting more objective terms. I’m not quite sure exactly how this works, but it seems an intriguing perspective that might provide a path towards some useful insight.

Quanta and Qualia

sorates and branestawmQuentin Ruyant has written a thoughtful piece about quantum mechanics and philosophy of mind: in a nutshell he argues both that quantum theory may be relevant to the explanation of consciousness and that consciousness may be relevant to the interpretation of quantum theory.

Is quantum theory relevant to consciousness? Well. of course some people have said so, notably Sir Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff.  I think Ruyant is right, though, that the majority of philosophers and probably the majority of physicists dismiss the idea that quantum theory might be needed to explain consciousness. People often suggest that the combination of the two only appeals because both are hard to explain: ‘here’s one mystery and here’s another: maybe one explains the other’. Besides, people say, the brain is far too big and hot and messy for anything other than classical physics to be required

In making the case for the relevance of quantum theory, Ruyant relies on the Hard Problem.  His position is that the Hard Problem is not biological but a matter of physics, whereas the Easy Problem, to do with all the scientifically tractable aspects of consciousness, can be dealt with by biology or psychology.

Actually, turning aside from the main thread of Ruyant’s argument, there are some reasons to suggest that quantum physics is relevant to the Easy Problem. Penrose’s case, in fact, seems to suggest just that: in his view consciousness is demonstrably non-computable and some kind of novel quantum mechanics is his favoured candidate to fill the gap. Penrose’s examples, things like solving mathematical problems, look like ‘Easy’ Problem matters to me.

Although I don’t think anyone (including me) advocates the idea, it also seems possible to argue that the ‘spooky action at a distance’ associated with quantum entanglement might conceivably have something to tell us about intentionality and its remarkable power to address things that are remote and not directly connected with us.

Anyway, Ruyant is mainly concerned with the Hard Problem, and his argument is that metaphysics and physics are closely related. Topics like the essential nature of physical things straddle the borderline between the two subjects, and it is not at all implausible therefore that the deep physics of quantum mechanics might shed light on the deep metaphysics of phenomenal experience. It seems to me a weakish line of argument, possibly tinged with a bit of prejudice: some physicists are inclined to feel that while their subject deals with the great fundamentals, biology deals only with the chance details of life; sort of a more intellectual kind of butterfly collecting.  That kind of thinking is not really well founded, and it seems particularly odd to think that biology is irrelevant when considering a phenomenon that, so far as we know, appears only in animals and is definitely linked very strongly with the operation of the brain. John Searle for one argues that ‘Hard Problem’ consciousness arises from natural biological properties of brain tissue. We don’t yet know what those properties are, but in his view it’s absurd to think that the job of nerves could equally well be performed by beer cans and string. Ruth Millikan, somewhat differently, has argued that consciousness is purely biological in nature, arising from and defined by evolutionary needs.

I think the truth is that it’s difficult to get anywhere at this meta-theoretical level:  we don’t really decide what kind of theory is most likely to be right and then concentrate on that area; we decide what the true theory most likely is and then root for the kind of theory it happens to be. That, to a great extent, is why quantum theories are not very popular: no-one has come up with a particular one that is cogent and appealing.  It seems to me that Ruyant likes the idea of physics-based theories because he favours panpsychism, or panphenomenalism, and so is inclined to think that the essential nature of matter is likely to be the right place to look for a theory.

To be honest, though, I doubt whether any kind of science can touch the Hard Problem.  It’s about entities that have no causal properties and are ineffable: how could empirical science ever deal with that? It might well be that a scientist will eventually give us the answer, but if so it won’t be by doing science, because neither classical nor quantum physics can really touch the inexpressible.

Actually, though there is a long shot.  If Colin McGinn is partly on the right track, it may be that consciousness seems mysterious to us simply because we’re not looking at it the right way: our minds won’t conceptualise it correctly. Now the same could be true of quantum theory. We struggle with the interpretation of quantum mechanics, but what if we could reorient our brains so that it simply seemed natural, and we groped instead for an acceptable ‘interpretation’ of spooky classical physics? If we could make such a transformation in our mental orientation, then perhaps consciousness would make sense too? It’s possible, but we’re back to banging two mysteries together in the hope that some spark will be generated.

Ruyant’s general case, that metaphysicians should be informed by our best physics is hard to argue with. At the moment few philosophers really engage with the physics and few physicists really grasp the philosophy. Why do philosophers avoid quantum physics? Partly, no doubt, just because it’s difficult, and relies on mathematics which few philosophers can handle. Partly also, I think there’s an unspoken fear that in learning about quantum physics your intuitions will be trained into accepting a particular weltanschauung that might not be helpful. Connected with that is the fear that quantum physics isn’t really finished or definitive. Where would I be if I came up with a metaphysical system that perfectly supported quantum theory and then a few years later it turns out that I should have been thinking in terms of string theory? Metaphysicians cross their fingers and hope they can deal with the key issues at a level of generality that means they won’t be rudely contradicted by an unexpected advance in physics a few years later.

I suppose what we really need is someone who can come up with a really good specific theory that shows the value of metaphysics informed by physics, but few people are qualified to produce one. I must say that Ruyant seems to be an exception, with an excellent grasp of the theories on both sides of the divide. Perhaps he has a theory of consciousness in his back pocket…?

Decomissioning Physicalism

Picture: Honeycomb series. Panpsychism, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say panexperientialism, has seemed to be quite a popular view in previous discussions here, but I’ve always found it problematic. Panexperientialism, as the name suggests, is the belief that experience is everywhere; that experience is the basis of reality, out of which everything else is built.  Objects which seem dead and inanimate ultimately consist of experience just as much as we do: it just doesn’t seem like that because the experiences which make them up are not our experiences.  The attractive feature of this view is that it removes some of the mystery from consciousness: instead of being a very rare phenomenon which only occurs in very specific circumstances, such as those which exist in our brains, consciousness of a sort is universal, and so it’ s not at all surprising that we ourselves are conscious.

One of the problems is the question of how many experiential loci we’re dealing with. Does the table have experiences? Does half the table? Do the table legs have four separate sets of experiences, and at the same time a sort of federal joint experience as a composite entity? There are ways to solve these problems, but they’re distinctly off-putting to me. More fundamentally, I’m inclined to doubt whether the theory is as helpful in explaining things as  it seems. OK, so my brain has experience just because it’s an object and all objects have experience; but surely that brain-as-an-object experience is the same kind of thing as the experiences rocks have, while the experience I’m interested in, the kind that influences my bodily behaviour, is something else; something which remains unexplained.

One of the sources of difficulty here, I think, as with many metaphysical theories, is that the philosophical point of view is not well integrated with any clear scientific conception.  When we need to pin down our loci of experience we’re left to rummage around and see what we can come up with – atoms? Too small.  Discrete physical entities? What exactly are they? (Shintoism, if I understand it correctly, has bitten this kind of bullet and given up on a sharp definition of what is animate: lots of things can have souls, but only if they’re salient or impressive. Mount Fuji definitely gets one, but some anonymous pile of dirt in your back garden is just a pile of dirt.)

But what about Finite Eventism? This theory (as expounded by Carey R. Carlson in Chapter 12 of Mind that abides: Panpsychism in the New Millennium) is a theory of physics first and foremost, one that happens to provide a neat basis for a solution to the mind-body problem taking a panpsychist/panexperientialist view. It is based on the late ideas of Russell and Whitehead, though one of its appealing features is that it dovetails well with quantum theory in a way Russell and Whitehead were not aware of.

The gist of the theory is a radical reduction of physics to a minimalist ontology consisting of events and the basic temporal relations of being earlier or later (there’s also cause and effect, which I take to be causally connected varieties of earlier/later). There are some rules which prevent inconsistency (events can’t be earlier/later than themselves) and that’s it. In particular, there is no initial concept of space or extension. We are allowed convergent and divergent causal paths, so we can construct complex multiple ‘honeycomb’ pathways like the one shown. The four consistent axes which appear in these diagrams are taken to make up a 4-D manifold of space-time, with neutrinos and electrons delineated by gaps, and the repetition of patterns in sequence representing persistence over time.  Quanta, in this theory, are represented by the steps between two events; the number of intermediate steps between two events corresponds with the relative frequency of the relevant path, and these relative frequency ratios provide relative energy ratios, following Planck’s E=hf.

I hope those brief,  inadequate remarks give a hint of how the basics of physics can be built up in a very elegant manner from the simple topology of these sequences: it looks impressive, though I must frankly admit that I’m not competent to explain the theory properly, never mind evaluate it. Readers may like to look at this short description (pdf).

The question for us is, what are these ‘events’? Carlson follows Whitehead in seeing them all as ‘occasions of experience’; in some ways they resemble the monads of Leibniz’s radically relativist ontology;  they are pure phenomenal moments. Carlson argues that the basis of all science is phenomenal experience; historically, in order to account for those experiences better through Newtonian style physics it became necessary to postulate unexperienced abstract entities; and then the phenomenal experience dropped out of the theory leaving us with a world made of fundamentally unaccountable entities.

The best part of it for me is that the theory provides relatively good and clear answers to the problems I mentioned above. It’s clear that the loci of experience are situated in the events: I take it that continuity of experience is guaranteed in exactly the same way as physical continuity by repeating patterns (though what the nature of those patterns amounts to is an interesting question).  If that’s so, then the relationship between the consciousness of my brain-as-object and the consciousness of my brain-as-brain is also helpfully clarified.

How far, though, is the actual nature of my consciousness clarified? The explanation of most of my mental characteristics is deferred upwards to be explained by the working of the brain. That is, no doubt, exactly as it should be: but it leaves me with no particular reason to adopt panpsychism. The one feature which the theory does explain is phenomenal experience (alright, a fairly important feature!); but it really only does so by telling us that things just do have phenomenal experience.  Why should we take it that the events are phenomenal in nature – doesn’t ontological parsimony suggest they should be featureless blips?

Still, I think this is the most viable and attractive formulation of panpsychism/panexperientialism I’ve seen.