Eric Holloway gives a brisk and entertaining dismissal of all materialist theories of consciousness here, boldly claiming that no materialist theory of consciousness is plausible. I’m not sure his coverage is altogether comprehensive, but let’s have a look at his arguments. He starts out by attacking panpsychism…
One proposed solution is that all particles are conscious. But, in that case, why am I a human instead of a particle? The vast majority of conscious beings in the universe would be particles, and so it is most likely I’d be a particle and not any sort of organic life form.
It’s really a bit of a straw man he’s demolishing here. I’m not sure panpsychists are necessarily committed to the view that particles are conscious (I’m not sure panpsychists are necessarily materialists, either), but I’ve certainly never run across anyone who thinks that the consciousness of a particle and the consciousness of a human being would be the same. It would be more typical to say that particles, or whatever the substrate is, have only a faint glow of awareness, or only a very simple, perhaps binary kind of consciousness. Clearly there’s then a need to explain how the simple kind of consciousness relates or builds up into our kind; not an easy task, but that’s the business panpsychists are in, and they can’t be dismissed without at least looking at their proposals.
Another solution is that certain structures become conscious. But a structure is an abstract entity and there is an untold infinite number of abstract entities.
This is perhaps Holloway’s riposte; he considers this another variety of panpsychism, though as stated it seems to me to encompass a lot of non-panpsychist theories, too. I wholeheartedly agree that conscious beings are not abstract entities, an error which is easy to fall into if you are keen on information or computation as the basis of your theory. But it seems to me hard to fight the idea that certain structural (or perhaps I mean functional) properties instantiated in particular physical beings are what amounts to consciousness. On the one hand there’s a vast wealth of evidence that structures in our brains have a very detailed influence on the content of our experiences. On the other, if there are no structural features, broadly described, that all physical instances of conscious entities have in common, it seems to me hard to avoid radical mysterianism. Even dualists don’t usually believe that consciousness can simply be injected randomly into any physical structure whatever (do they?). Of course we can’t yet say authoritatively what those structural features are.
Another option, says Holloway, is illusionism.
But, if we are allowed to “solve” the problem that way, all problems can be solved by denying them. Again, that is an unsatisfying approach that ‘explains’ by explaining away.
Empty dismissal of consciousness would indeed not amount to much, but again that isn’t what illusionists actually say; typically they offer detailed ideas about why consciousness must be an illusion and varied proposals about how the illusion arises. I think many would agree with David Chalmers that explaining why people do believe in consciousness is currently where some of the most interesting action is to be found.
Some say consciousness is an emergent property of a complex structure of matter… …At what point is a structure complex enough to become conscious?
I agree that complexity alone is not enough, though some people have been attracted to the idea, suggesting that the Internet, for example, might achieve consciousness. A vastly more sophisticated form of the same kind of thinking perhaps underlies the Integrated Information theory. But emergence can mean more than that; in particular it might say that when systems have enough structural complexity of the right kind (frantic hand-waving), they acquire interesting properties (meaningful, experiential ones) that can only be addressed on a higher level of interpretation. That, I think, is true; it just doesn’t help all that much.
Holloway wraps up with another pop at those fully-conscious particles that surely no-one believes in anyway. I don’t think he has shown that no materialist theory can be plausible – the great mainstream ideas of functionalism/computationalism are largely untouched – but I salute the chutzpah of anyone who thinks such an issue can be wrapped up in one side of A4 – and is willing to take it on!
One thing I like to do when considering such things is to think instead of an automobile and its parts as analogous to a human being (or just its brain, take your pick) and it’s ability to go from A to B as analogous to consciousness. A car is a complex object consisting of many parts and has a certain functionality. Not all of its parts contribute to that functionality. We can rip out the radio and it still gets us from A to B. Also, if we consider each of its parts in turn, none of them have the ability to get from A to B by themselves.
Using this analogy it is easy blow up many of Holloway’s points. As with Searle’s Chinese Room, it is unreasonable to expect a component of a conscious brain to also be conscious. We can rip out selected parts and the rest may still be conscious, just as we can rip out the radio and many other parts from our car and still get from A to B.
Holloway says “If we take away one particle from that structure then it must cease to be conscious.” Why? Once we understand consciousness, perhaps we can whittle the mechanism down to its bare bones such that all parts are essential to maintaining consciousness. I doubt that consciousness is such an all-or-none kind of functionality. However we end up defining it, it will be possible to remove a few parts and the result will still be conscious but at some reduced level or missing some component functionality such as inability to think consciously about smells.
Ahh youth, and doesn’t one-side imply another side…
…together equaling theory of relativity’s equivalence to consciousness …
Mr Holloway had the courage to mention himself as I (in his paper) another equivalent of chutzpah…thanks Peter
Holloway manages to make me feel aggrieved on behalf of all the positions he dismisses. He doesn’t make any effort to really engage with them. As a broadly functionalist/computationalist myself, I’m always interested in any actual arguments people marshal against that view, but it seems like Hollaway is just roaring at the wind.
“I’m not sure panpsychists are necessarily materialists, either”
It seems like panpsychists fall into two broad groups: naturalistic and dualistic. The naturalistic ones use a very deflated definition of consciousness (such as interaction with the environment) to conclude everything has at least an incipient level of it. It’s really just romantic physicalism. The dualistic ones are similar, but think that there’s something irreducibly super-physical involved, like an additional fundamental force. Many fall comfortably into one camp or another, but some seem agnostic.
But even dualistic panpsychism (pandualism) doesn’t match up with traditional religious beliefs, which given the (presumably associated) organizations listed in the MindMatters.ai site footer, is probably why it just got lumped in with materialism.
Dismissing materialism as the ontological primitive in both causation and consciousness is a great place to start. But why stop there. One must also be compelled to dismiss all variations of western and eastern idealism as well, simply because the idea of mind being the ontological primitive is equally false. Idealism is not capable of explaining materialism let alone causation or consciousness.
If one is interested in a renaissance of philosophy, the ontology of materialism and idealism have to be abandoned and replaced by an ontology with the explanatory power to accommodate both matter and mind. Once developed, it will be an ontology which eliminates the duality and paradoxes built into our current descriptions of the structure of reality.
Right, complexity alone is insufficient for the emergence of consciousness. But consciousness understood as a means of focusing attention, monitoring our thoughts and actions, and motivating actions based on that focusing and monitoring can obviously increase reproductive fitness.
Speculating a bit, assume the internet’s operating system was programmed to reproduced itself as a population of separate versions with variable code as the internet’s storage and computational space expands. Hacking attacks on this population of reproducing operating systems (with the aim of making the code non-functional) could select for operating systems that recognize these attacks, focus anti-hacking software on them, and even attack the attackers. This could be selection for the beginning of consciousness.
Following this speculative train of thought a bit more: In seeking to reproduce (to occupy limited computational space with copies of itself), operating system versions could be selected for which make hacking attacks on each other and even cooperate in groups of operating systems to attack other groups. Cooperation strategies could then be selected for that trigger the functional equivalents of empathy, gratitude, loyalty, anger, guilt, and shame (which are biological elements of cooperation strategies in humans). So yes, the internet, under conditions as described, could become conscious. Avoiding that (which seems like a good idea) could be accomplished by putting a wrench, by one means or another, in the evolutionary processes of variation, selection, and reproduction.
Of course, if evolutionary selection processes acting on populations of computer codes is all that is needed to produce consciousness, then a really clever programmer could just program consciousness in from the getgo. Perhaps for very rudimentary consciousness, that programming would be a lot easier than we might imagine.
Jumping ahead a bit I think. A definition of consciousness would help. We assume the experience is similar for everyone. If that were true, there would be no disagreements. What of dreams? Obviously conscious, yet no reason, no linear time. (At least for me) Probably many types of consciousness.
Maybe the brain has a high energy, high mass particle for an homunculus that centralizes consciousness and free will. Maybe humans are in essence a very massive fundamental particle amplified by a brain.
Higher mass particles exhibit more complicated behavior than low mass particles and frequency goes up in proportion to mass for fundamental particles. Frequency is like clock speed for computers or time perception for a consciousness indicating that a lot more computations or thinking can occur.
If the finite universe is conscious with intelligence and free will, particles would be the offspring that take a very long time to mature to be a universe.
Cosmopsychism and panpsychism would need to be linked because consciousness is so complicated, the particles would have needed to inherit it from a parent conscious universe.
It all seems unlikely but I think it is worth looking for homuncular particles since they can be moved to highly engineered custom bodies good for a wide range of environments in the universe and death will mostly be a thing of the past!
…particle-ness, illusion-ness, conscious-ness, in a field of relativity to our being here…
But will he be writing a followup “no non-materialist theory of consciousness is plausible”?
They never seem to give it a real shot though and experiment with it.
Like can we just imagine a planet where life forms. Could it evolve into an organism that uses tools, has buildings and cars, interacts with others of it’s own kind and yet isn’t conscious – just a bunch of very complicated biological processes?
If that’s taken as impossible then how about saying why?
I mean we can keep our own exceptionalism in this case, we don’t have to put that on the chopping block. So let’s just imagine some other planet that formed life and then life that interacts with tools but there isn’t a conscious soul on the planet. Impossible? Why so? Wouldn’t that imply tool use is somehow only possible with consciousness? Otherwise why couldn’t the set up exist?
A zombie brain (computer) might need vastly more energy and resources to even begin to compete with a conscious brain when there is an environment that changes a lot. Organisms that exploit the consciousness capabilities of particles would outperform the ones that don’t. Physicist’s need to look for consciousness and free will properties of particles. Evolution finds all properties of matter that are useful.
It might be like asexual vs. sexual reproduction, the more the environment changes and the more complicated the organism the more sexual reproduction and and also consciousness with free will would make a difference.
I think Sam Harris did a better critique of materialism in The Mystery of Consciousness:
https://samharris.org/the-mystery-of-consciousness/
There’s also Andrew Clifton’s An Empirical Case Against Materialism:
http://cogprints.org/3481/1/An_empirical_case_against_materialism.pdf
Also I think if we separate “consciousness” into Fodor’s three aspects – Intentionality, Rationality, Subjectivity – it becomes easier to see what the stakes are. Namely if materialism is true how does one not be an eliminativist re: Intentionality, yet how does one be such a person without rejecting Cogito Ergo Sum?
Ah, should’ve mentioned Sjöstedt-H’s Why I am Not a Physicalist: Four Reasons for Rejecting the Faith
https://thesideview.co/articles/why-i-am-not-a-physicalist/
“Organisms that exploit the consciousness capabilities of particles would outperform the ones that don’t. Physicist’s need to look for consciousness and free will properties of particles. Evolution finds all properties of matter that are useful.”
Okay, but you haven’t even begun to explain what capabilities consciousness has or how free will could possibly exist. The problem with free will is *not* that physicists or whichever other scientists have not yet found (or looked for) something in “particles” or anything else in the world that can provide a mechanism for free will. The problem with free will is that it is logically incoherent. To consciously direct action means one needs to think about an action in order to initiate that action…but where did that thought come from? You end up in a position where one needs to think of something before they’ve thought of it. It doesn’t even rise to the level of scientific investigation. It’s wrong at a much more fundamental level.
“To consciously direct action means one needs to think about an action in order to initiate that action…but where did that thought come from? You end up in a position where one needs to think of something before they’ve thought of it. ”
The thought came from combining other, more primitive thoughts. This is the structure of complexity: bigger things are built from smaller things. The infinite regression you imply is the result of a lack of imagination. Our powers of introspection do not have access to those more primitive thoughts or we simply fail to recognize them. Neuroscience can probe these more primitive thoughts but, so far, we don’t know how to interpret them. We can see the more primitive thoughts but only as a signal transmission of some kind.
Free will is much more easily explained. It is merely a way human culture describes the decision-making process. If an action was coerced by another human (eg, a gun held to the head) or the brain isn’t operating normally (disease, drugs, etc.), then we say that the person in question lacked free will.
Those that say free will doesn’t exist are being overly reductive, tracing every cause back until it no longer exists in the realm of human endeavor. Free will is a concept that only exists in human culture. As with pretty much anything, if you trace causes too far, it simply disappears.