Four kinds of Hard

four hard problemsNot one Hard Problem, but four. Jonathan Dorsey, in the latest JCS, says that the problem is conceived in several different ways and we really ought to sort out which we’re talking about.

The four conceptions, rewritten a bit by me for what I hope is clarity, are that the problem is to explain why phenomenal consciousness:

  1. …arises from the physical (using only a physicalist ontology)
  2. …arises from the physical, using any ontology
  3. …arises at all (presumably from the non-physical)
  4. …arises at all or cannot be explained.

I don’t really see these as different conceptions of the problem (which simply seems to be the explanation of phenomenal consciousness), but rather as different conceptions of what the expected answer is to be. That may be nit-picking; useful distinctions in any case.  Dorsey offers some pros and cons for each of the four.

In favour of number one, it’s the most tightly focused. It also sits well in context, because Dorsey sees the problem as emerging under the dominance of physics. The third advantage is that it confines the problem to physicalism and so makes life easy for non-physicalists (not sure why this is held to be one of the pros, exactly). Against; well, maybe that context is dominating too much? Also the physicalist line fails to acknowledge Chalmers’ own naturalist but non-physicalist solution (it fails to acknowledge lots of other potential solutions too, so I’m not quite clear why Chalmers gets this special status at this point – though of course he did play a key role in defining the Hard Problem).

Number two’s pros and cons are mostly weaker versions of number one’s. It too is relatively well-focused. It does not identify the Hard Problem with the Explanatory Gap (that could be a con rather than a pro in my humble opinion). It fits fairly well in context and makes life relatively easy for traditional non-physicalists. It may yield a bit too much to the context of physics and it may be too narrow.

Number three has the advantage of focusing on the basics, and Dorsey thinks it gives a nice clear line between Hard and Easy problems. It provides a unifying approach – but it neglects the physical, which has always been central to discussion.

Number four provides a fully extended version of the problem, and makes sense of the literature by bringing in eliminativism. In a similar way it gives no-one a free pass; everyone has to address it. However, in doing so it may go beyond the bounds of a single problem and extend the issues to a wide swathe of philosophy of mind.

Dorsey thinks the answer is somewhere between 2 and 3; I’m more inclined to think it’s most likely between 1 and 2.

Let’s put aside the view that phenomenal consciousness cannot be explained. There are good arguments for that conclusion, but to me they amount to opting out of a game which is by no means clearly lost. So the problem is to explain how phenomenal consciousness arises. The explanation surely has to fit into some ontology, because we need to know what kind of thing phenomenal experience really is. My view is that the high-level differences between ontologies actually matter less than people have traditionally thought. Look at it this way: if we need an ontology, then it had better be comprehensive and consistent.  Given those two properties, we might as well call it a monism. because it encompasses everything and provides one view, even if that one view is complex.

So we have a monism: but it might be materialism, idealism, spiritualism, neutral monism, or many others. Does it matter? The details do matter, but if we’ve got one substance it seems to me it doesn’t matter what label we apply. Given that the material world and its ontology is the one we have by far the best knowledge of, we might as well call it materialism. It might turn out that materialism is not what we think, and it might explain all sorts of things we didn’t expect it to deal with, but I can’t see any compelling reason to call our single monist ontology anything else.

So what are the details, and what ontology have we really got? I’m aware that most regulars here are pretty radical materialists, with some exceptions (hat tip to cognicious); people who have some difficulty with the idea that the cosmos has any contents besides physical objects; uncomfortable with the idea of ideas (unless they are merely conjunctions of physical objects) and even with the belief that we can think about anything that isn’t robustly physical (so much for mathematics…). That’s not my view. I’m also a long way from from being a Platonist, but I do think the world includes non-physical entities, and that that doesn’t contradict a reasonable materialism. The world just is complex and in certain respects irreducible; probably because it’s real. Reduction, maybe, is essentially a technique that applies to ideas and theories: if we can come up with a simpler version that does the job,  then the simpler version is to be adopted. But it’s a mistake to think that that kind of reduction applies to reality itself; the universe is not obliged to conform to a flat ontology, and it does not. At the end of the day – and I say this with the greatest regret – the apprehension of reality is not purely a matter of finding the simplest possible description.

I believe the somewhat roomier kind of materialism I tend to espouse corresponds generally with what we should recognise as the common sense view, and this yields what might be another conception of the Hard Problem…

  1. …arises from the physical (in a way consistent with common sense)

 

33 thoughts on “Four kinds of Hard

  1. I think the problem is thinking there is a problem .. there is no problem if you don’t assume that physics is a gift of the angels and trumps reality. Then consciousness becomes another problem to be investigated like any other.

    The “hard” and “soft” problems are cultural problems. They are about the challenge to enlightenment propaganda and general whiggish BS that haunts physics, locked as it is in the 18th century weltenschaung. Consciousness doesn’t flow from physics ? That can’t be right – otherwise western democracy will fall apart. Admittedly this sounds drastic – but in reality the anti-consciousness undertones are locked in ideological strappings that date back to the 18th and 19th centuries and the alleged triumph of the rational, a dogma which the far-from-rational Isaac Newton became the unintended hero. True irony indeed, as it’s something Newton would have dreaded as a hardcore religious fundamentalist. To him, physics was a game that God played.

    Whatever your view on the ‘problems’, one thing is for sure – they shed not an ounce into the causes of consciousness. That is a scientific problem to which neuroscientists are addressing themselves. They are doing this the only way they can : incrementally and very,very slowly. Biological entities are complex – even the nematode (100+ neorons) is too complex to science to deal with, mainly because the tool that makes up the spine of physics, mathematics, is of far less use in biology because statistical physics is the weak link in the physics toolkit.

    Brains cause minds. How do they do it ? Now that is the formulation of the problem of consciousness.

  2. “I’m aware that most regulars here are pretty radical materialists, with some exceptions (hat tip to cognicious); people who have some difficulty with the idea that the cosmos has any contents besides physical objects . . .”

    Wow. Thanks for the recognition, Peter, but if your estimate of the regulars is correct, it’s alarming. Have I fallen into a nest of radical materialists? It’s happened before, and there’s no (productive) arguing with them. I don’t understand how intelligent people can reconcile materialism with the fact that they have any experiences at all.

  3. I might be wrong and I certainly mean no offence to anyone, but in previous discussions I’ve noticed that many people’s materialism seems more rigorous than mine. I count myself a materialist (in the sense sketched above) but I don’t believe a list of physical entities can exhaust the interesting things to be said about the world.

  4. Peter, the most interesting thing is the fact that we experience a surrounding world full of phenomenal entities in perspectival relation to our self and to each other.

  5. Option two would presumably include an Aristotelian ontology of matter and form, that is soul

  6. Peter, you suggest that phenomenal experience might be shown to “…arise from the physical (in a way consistent with common sense [materialism])”.

    Given that you believe the world includes non-physical entities, this leaves room for the idea that consciousness arises as something non-physical from the physical. Certainly consciousness isn’t straightforwardly physical, otherwise there would be no hard problem. Phenomenal experience is subjective and qualitative, and no physical phenomena I’m aware of share those characteristics. So how do subjectivity and qualitativeness arise from phenomena that don’t possess either? Perhaps there are analogies with how other non-physical entities (e.g., concepts, numbers) arise that could shed light on this formulation of the hard problem.

  7. Tom Clark: “Given that you believe the world includes non-physical entities, this leaves room for the idea that consciousness arises as something non-physical from the physical.”

    I think we go astray in talking about consciousness when we call it an entity. Material objects are poor models, misleading models, for consciousness. The word “consciousness” is an abstract noun. In this culture, with its languages, talking about publicly observable things is easier than talking about phenomena that shouldn’t even be named by nouns.

  8. Clearly consciousness is not a physical thing, in the sense of something you could dissect out and put in a bottle – but that doesn’t mean we need a second metaphysical realm for it.

    I do indeed think our puzzlement over qualia has to do with difficulties over what I refer to as haecceity, and the distinction between existence and subsistence; but this is perhaps not the place to revisit all that.

  9. Consciousness, according to the best evidence we have, is a biophysical process realized in particular kinds of brains. Science cannot explain the sheer existence of consciousness, just as it can’t explain the sheer existence of anything else. But science can explain subjectivity, the essential content of consciousness. The SMTT experiments demonstrate that the same theoretical brain mechanisms that give us subjectivity can publically create vivid hallucinatory experiences — controlled qualia detached from corresponding sensory input.

  10. Lovely piece. But what about going meta, suggesting that the hardest problem to overcome is actually the notion there’s a hard problem to be overcome? I’m actually with you on a number of issues, here. I personally don’t care all that much for terms like ‘materialism.’ Not that I don’t like them–I just don’t care. I don’t care because I don’t see how they add anything but another dimension of confusion to the debate. Science is, as you say, a big tent, filled with as many kluges as our brains. It’s important to recall, however, that the kinds of ‘irreducibility’ you encounter isn’t anything ‘metaphysical’ or ‘fundamental’ so much as a result of heuristic cognition. There’s nothing mysterious about it.

    Meanwhile, the theoretical challenge is the same as it always is when attempting to provide interpretative frameworks in advance of the science: to provide, given what we already know, the most comprehensive, economical explanation of the phenomena possible. Assume mediocrity, assume the veracity of existing scientific paradigms, and do your best to answer. This is all my approach consists in… not very radical at all, though (as is often the case in science) the conclusions suggested are.

    The real ‘hard problem,’ I think, is that consciousness is the one scientific phenomena possessing as many laboratories as there are heads. Whenever they encounter an answer they don’t like, they consult the apparent apparatus in their skull and declare the results cannot be replicated.

  11. Peter: “Clearly consciousness is not a physical thing, in the sense of something you could dissect out and put in a bottle – but that doesn’t mean we need a second metaphysical realm for it.”

    By a second metaphysical realm perhaps you mean a second sort of substance, so perhaps you’re saying that consciousness doesn’t partake of a non-physical substance even though it’s not a physical thing. Following Cognicious above, experience isn’t physical because it’s not a locatable object or entity, nor is it a publicly observable phenomenon like its neural correlates. Thus it’s rather like concepts, which aren’t locatable or observable, but which we don’t suppose deserve their own distinct metaphysical, substantial realm.

    Concepts are mind-dependent representational tools which we use in modeling the mind-independent objective world. Likewise, qualia are mind-dependent representational elements with which the world is presented to each of us as subjects. Both present the world as being basically physical – spatio-temporal and objective (mind-independent) – but we find neither qualia nor concepts in the physical world they represent. Thus arises the puzzle of how to fit them into a physicalist ontology.

    The trick, I think, is to see that the very idea of the physical is an ontological category bequeathed to us as modelers of the world using concepts and qualia, not a foundational truth about the substantial essence of reality. Which is not to say I doubt the existence of physical objects – they are as real as anything gets as represented by me via my experience. But it is to say that experience is equally real: it’s the subjective, qualitative medium (a representational reality) by which the objective, quantifiable, physical world (a represented reality) is presented to us as conscious creatures.

    That we don’t (and won’t) find qualia in the material world they represent, combined with the fact that they arise only in conjunction with certain configurations of that world (those that participate in representing the world itself) suggests to me that the key to consciousness is indeed representation, something *prior* to any ontology. But of course we tend to want to explain consciousness as arising from – produced by – the physical since the physical is the most basic, uncontroversial ontological category given to us by representation. We won’t succeed in that, I don’t think.

  12. The SMTT hallucinations provide very strong evidence (within the norms of science) that conscious experience is constituted by a particular kind of biophysical mechanism in the brain, namely, retinoid space. What are the counter arguments?

  13. Tom, Physical to me is what deals with the four fundamental laws and biology is just a special form of physical. As an electrical circuit engineer, what fascinates me with all of Peter’s ideas and the commenters is that they all point to the fact that the brain and cns is a system of several organs and functions which are lumped into confusions that get mentioned all over this blog as words like physical, spirit, concept, etc. Just for starters. As Scott alludes, just mention pansychism and they think of spooky rocks feeling pain when you step on them.

    I consider myself a ‘panmotorist’ because everything in nature has the emf. But of course it takes metal atoms like copper formed into wires and wound as an armature to make an electric motor. And the motor has special structural qualities like shafts, bearings, brushes etc. To make it function. Brains and the cns are no different in structural functions which we have only some information about.

    I don’t worry about mind or consciousness being ‘some other’ part of nature or non-nature any more than ‘motorness’ being something special or different.

  14. VicP: “I don’t worry about mind or consciousness being ‘some other’ part of nature or non-nature any more than ‘motorness’ being something special or different.”

    Ok, then there’s no hard problem for you. But some like myself (and Peter, apparently) see a genuine issue of explaining why only certain sorts of neural goings-on entail the existence of experience for the system.

    Arnold: Would it be outside the norms of science to seek an answer to the question of why and how the biophysical mechanism of retinoid space results in, or constitutes, conscious experience, and not other sorts of neural goings-on?

  15. Tom, it would not be outside the norms of science to seek an answer to the question you ask. My candidate answer is that the mechanisms of retinoid space provide a volumetric space with short-term autaptic memory and, crucially, a fixed locus of perspectival origin (I!). Its neuronal structure an dynamics successfully predict many previously inexplicable conscious phenomena, providing empirical evidence for the validity of the theoretical model.

  16. Arnold: “My candidate answer is that the mechanisms of retinoid space provide a volumetric space with short-term autaptic memory and, crucially, a fixed locus of perspectival origin (I!). Its neuronal structure and dynamics successfully predict many previously inexplicable conscious phenomena, providing empirical evidence for the validity of the theoretical model.”

    I wonder then why this isn’t accepted universally as an answer to the hard problem. My suggestion as to why it isn’t is that you haven’t yet explained how the neuronal structure and dynamics of retinoid space (as opposed to the many other sorts of neural structure and dynamics) entail the existence of qualitative states, even though it might successfully predict them.

  17. Tom, It was accepted fact that liquid water existed between 0 and 100 degrees C, but the hard problem was solving the dipole effect for water molecules. So I agree there is a hard problem for the phenomenality of neurons and neural networks when they interact with the environment.

    As I pointed out the brain is not a single organ but multiple organs, many of which we share with lower species. For phenomenality, I like to start with being or ‘beingness’ which we share with even our pets.

    As Scott pointed out, even with no accepted notion of how the brain structures conceptualize; the Blind ‘open loopiness’ of thinking on the brain, mind, consciousness etc. is predictable.

  18. Tom: “I wonder then why this isn’t accepted universally as an answer to the hard problem. My suggestion as to why it isn’t is that you haven’t yet explained how the neuronal structure and dynamics of retinoid space (as opposed to the many other sorts of neural structure and dynamics) entail the existence of qualitative states, even though it might successfully predict them.”

    You have hit on the key misunderstanding of investigators of consciousness! An answer to the question of the sheer existence of consciousness/qualitative states is, indeed, outside of the norms of science because science cannot explain the fundamental existence of anything. All that science is able to explain are the phenomenal contents of conscious experience.

  19. Arnold: “An answer to the question of the sheer existence of consciousness/qualitative states is, indeed, outside of the norms of science because science cannot explain the fundamental existence of anything. All that science is able to explain are the phenomenal contents of conscious experience.”

    The claim that consciousness is fundamental and beyond explanation needs justification, seems to me. We only discover it under certain conditions, those of complex systems doing representational work. This suggests it’s a system property, not fundamental, and not beyond explanation. Folks are working on explanations as we speak, including Oizumi et al., “From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0”, http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003588

    VicP: I’d be interested to see if you think Oizumi et al. are making any progress on the hard problem. I’m not saying they’re necessarily right, but they are at least engaged in trying to explain consciousness.

  20. Tom, you misrepresent what I said. I didn’t say that consciousness is beyond scientific explanation. In fact, I claim that the neuronal structure and dynamics of retinoid space does explain consciousness. But you asserted “you haven’t yet explained how the neuronal structure and dynamics of retinoid space (as opposed to the many other sorts of neural structure and dynamics) entail the existence of qualitative states, even though it might successfully predict them.” I assumed that you took “qualitative states” to be equivalent to “conscious states” and wondered why other kinds of brain mechanisms do not entail conscious states. Suppose I ask you why 2 atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen entail water as opposed to other sorts of atomic combinations. What would your answer be?

  21. “Suppose I ask you why 2 atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen entail water as opposed to other sorts of atomic combinations. What would your answer be?”

    Something along the lines of seeing how the valences of that particular combination of elements (and not others) produce a particular molecule H2O which has certain well-defined properties. The entailment (causal and structural) from the constituents to the whole is well-defined and understood, all physical and out on the table, such that there’s no explanatory gap.

  22. Tom Clark says (#14): “The trick, I think, is to see that the very idea of the physical is an ontological category bequeathed to us as modelers of the world using concepts and qualia, not a foundational truth about the substantial essence of reality.”

    Yes, yes! And I want to add that the *idea* of the physical is formed using everyday sensory experience of the kinds that human nervous systems happen to allow us to have, particularly by means of our visual and tactile organs. The real physical, it turns out, as physicists learn about it, isn’t much like that.

    Then, also in #14: “But of course we tend to want to explain consciousness as arising from – produced by – the physical since the physical is the most basic, uncontroversial ontological category given to us by representation.”

    I think we want to explain consciousness as produced by the physical because the brain is undeniably something physical, and matter existed before there were minds. But why not take consciousness, instead of matter, as primary? Everyone has direct access to consciousness. For matter, all we have is, as you say, representations of it.

  23. We take particular kinds of organization of the (bio)physical as generative of consciousness because it enables to predict/understand relevant phenomena that we are otherwise unable to successfully predict. The justification is pragmatic.

  24. Tom, I think that before heavy water was discovered it was commonly accepted that H2O was the only molecular form for water. The point is that we can never dismiss the possibility that an alternative physical structure might satisfy the features of a standard model. So this possibility should not be taken as grounds for dismissing an existing model that works.

  25. Cognicicous: “I want to add that the *idea* of the physical is formed using everyday sensory experience of the kinds that human nervous systems happen to allow us to have, particularly by means of our visual and tactile organs. The real physical, it turns out, as physicists learn about it, isn’t much like that.”

    Yes, yes! The notions of stuff and extension that comprise the commonsense idea of the physical are given to us in terms of sensory qualities, but the physical as we represent it using science possesses no qualities, only measurable quantities as ordered in conceptual schemes like math and theories. So again, I think it’s a mistake when explaining consciousness to go looking for experiential qualities as somehow out there in the physical world as described by science, which is what naive physicalists are wont to do, e.g., in panpsychism or experience-brain identity claims.

  26. Arnold, just a nit-pick, but H2O still is the only molecular form for water. Heavy water, or D2O, is a different physical compound, with e.g. 11% higher density. This is a significant difference: when enough of the water in your body is replaced by heavy water, you’ll die.

  27. Cognicious

    “I think we want to explain consciousness as produced by the physical because ..”

    .. because then it would emerge from physics and maths. The best definition of “physical” there is is “processable by physics” – but with limits. Physics is based upon the core of the mathematical axiom, from whence no quality can emerge. It’s a big limitation that affects even the treatment of the “physical” itself. It’s not ludicrous to assume that time and space each have qualitative aspects – outside of their aspectual shape in consciousness – but physics won’t shed an ounce of light onto that possibility. It says nothing about the nature of time or of space in themselves, but about how they relate to each other.

    Tom is right – physics is a dead end for consciousness, and working out schemes to squeeze it in is doomed to failure. It says a lot for the dogmatic commitment connected to physics that people actually believe that physics – man-made,biological – can explain everything, as if this was some kind of entitlement, as if humans had gone beyond their biology and joined the ranks of the angels somehow

  28. @Cognicious #25

    I think we want to explain consciousness as produced by the physical because the brain is undeniably something physical, and matter existed before there were minds. But why not take consciousness, instead of matter, as primary? Everyone has direct access to consciousness. For matter, all we have is, as you say, representations of it.

    Considering my bleak epistemological stance, I’m a bit surprised that I’m feeling the need to answer your question, but I’ll give it a go and defend the third-party “objective” stance.
    Starting point: ontologies depend on epistemologies. You pick a different approach (to find out what’s true) and you end up with different primary entities, or no primary entities at all, in case your epistemology refuses reductionism altogether.
    Consequently, I personally “want to explain consciousness as produced by the physical” because of the pragmatic value of an hypothetical success. The physical here is seen as a third-party, “objective” account of measurable quantities, its value is in the “objective” (with scare quotes) part. It is a way to approach truth-claims that has the biggest chances of being widely accepted (because wide-acceptance is sought by explicitly trying to reach conclusions that are not influenced by different subjective experiences), as such it has the highest potential of shaping our societies and interactions.

    If we take consciousness as primary, a move which is perfectly legitimate in epistemological terms as far as I’m concerned, each one of us can independently pick their own truths (see Scott #12) and claim they have ontological weight: who is to deny the conclusions each one of us is led to by their own subjective experience? Also, if consciousness is primary, solipsism remains a very concrete possibility, making it epistemologically defensible for me to claim “I don’t care about your PE, for all I know it’s a figment of my own mind”, and then proceed to tickle you to death because I find it funny.
    So here is my answer: assuming the objective physical reality exists independently from my own experience allows me to engage with you, hope that we can constructively seek answers together, and reach consensual conclusions.
    It’s true that I find this possible and desirable because the contents of my own experience suggest that you probably have your own phenomenal experience, and one that I do hope to at least partially grasp (I have some idea of what is it like to be someone else). However, from here, to surpass solipsism and the more extreme forms of relativism (all truth claims are merely cultural artifacts and epistemologically equivalent _ they aren’t any good in my view, as they don’t help settling disagreements), we need to accept that our own experience suggests the following:
    1. Other agents out there have their own, separate experience.
    2. We all share the same source of our own experiences: the one unique and shared reality out there.
    This passage is inductive, we can’t be certain, but we should still do it confidently because of the practical benefit of doing so (of course, we more or less all follow this route in everyday life).

    Thus, the potential practical value of a physicalist explanation (made possible by 2. above) of consciousness is very big, because it potentially allows to settle disagreements, no matter how fundamental: think about the ontologies entailed by the different sacred texts and how hopeless we currently are in trying to reconcile one with the other. Otherwise, if religion is too scary a subject, think of the value of being able to discriminate between (possible) AIs, separating the conscious ones from the others. The same applies to organisms: being able to tell which ones are conscious has moral implications, doesn’t it? We currently make educated guesses at best, and can’t by definition make any progress if we take consciousness to be primary (not if we subsequently refuse to grant my point 2. above), can we? (Or maybe I’m missing something?)

  29. Another approach is to say that the “physical” is one of the primary human theories of human cognition. Space, time and matter are all “explanations” (well..kind of) for the process of human experience. As Kant recognised, it’s a “theory” that is innate and as such may best be described as a fixed cognitive framework from which there is no escape, with no possibility of validation or negation for a correspondence between experience and the thing being experienced. We just have to assume there is such a thing as a physical realm, as solipsism or idealism are just completely unsatisfactory.

    As consciousness is indeed cognitively prior to the physical, a reduction from the mental to the physical would seem highly unlikely, as the process of reduction involves stripping out from our theories of the physical those aspects which are qualitative – the interesting bits, in other words.

    That doesn’t preclude a science of consciousness, but it does preclude a physics of consciousness, regardless of how may eastern mystics prove that the Buddha was a quantum mechanics guru.

  30. First of all, hi everyone, my first comment here.

    Second, how about levels of consciousness? I don’t THINK there is a THING called Consciousness (Like John #32 have stated) but a PROCESS called consciousness and therefore levels it.

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